Style
Some of those other tidbits that
make for good writing.
Terms
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No Actor in Subject
Passive Voice
Nominalizations
No Action in Verb
Subject/Verb separation
Tie-In
Parallelism
Non-specific language
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Misplaced Modifiers
Dangling Modifiers
Negative Language
Faulty Word Choice
Cultural Idioms
Sexist Language
Unnecessary Words
Redundant Pair
Redundant Modifiers
No Actor In Subject
• An actor is the person or entity performing the
action in a sentence.
• The best sentences should have an actor as the
grammatical subject of the sentence.
• Avoid beginning sentences with “it” or “there.”
• The best way to find the actor is to place blame.
Ask yourself “who” or “what” is to blame for the
action. Who or What is responsible?
No Actor in Subject (cont.)
Example of No Actor in Subject:
The ball was thrown by Eric.
• The subject of this sentence is ball.
• The throwing is the action in the sentence.
• The actor in this sentence is Eric because he
is the one who threw the ball.
To fix this sentence, put the actor in the subject
and use an action verb:
Eric threw the ball.
No Actor in Subject (cont.)
Examples of No Actor in Subject:
There were five people who attended the play.
“There” is a place, not a person or thing.
Rewrite: Five people attended the play.
It was a dark and stormy night.
“It” is a pronoun and refers back to the last noun in
the previous sentence. This pronoun is often
non-specific and should be used with care.
Rewrite: The dark night stormed.
No Actor in Subject Examples
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He was arrested by the police.
The sandwich was eaten by Joe.
There were no runners running today.
It was paid for.
Your payment was not received.
Passive Voice
• Passive Voice makes a sentence harder to read
because the actor always comes later in the
sentence than the action. Although passive
voice is sometimes necessary and advisable, we
will not use it in this class.
• A passive voice phrase has a “to be” verb and
past tense verb (participle).
• You must look at the entire verb phrase to find
passive voice.
Passive Voice (cont.)
• We have eight “to be” verbs:
– Is
– Am
– Are
– Was
– Were
– Be
– Being
– Been
Passive Voice (cont.)
• Example of Passive Voice:
– The ball was thrown by Eric.
The to be verb=was
The past tense verb=thrown
Notice the sentence also has no actor in the
subject.
To fix passive voice, you need to put an actor in
the subject and use an action verb.
Rewrite: Eric threw the ball.
Passive Voice (cont.)
Another Example of Passive Voice:
– After generations of excessive greed, the idea of civic
duty was finally born.
The to be verb=was
The past tense verb=born.
Even though these two words are separated by an
adverb (finally), this sentence still has passive voice.
Notice again that the sentence has no actor in the
subject.
Rewrite: After generations of excessive greed,
Americans bore the idea of civic duty.
Nominalizations
• A nominalization is a noun that should be
a verb, or you can think of it as a verb
acting as a noun.
• Nominalizations hide the action of a
sentence.
• Nominalizations usually (but not always)
end in:
-ence, -ance, ery, ary, -tion, -ment
Nominalizations (cont.)
Examples of Nominalizations:
Marketing was his specialization.
Marketing=subject
Was=verb
His=implied actor
Specialization=action
To fix: make the noun into a verb and remove any
smaller, unnecessary verbs from the sentence.
Rewrite: He specialized in marketing.
Nominalizations (cont.)
• The easiest way to find nominalization in a
sentence is to find all of the nouns and ask
yourself if that noun could be a verb. If the
answer is yes, then the noun is a
nominalization.
• You must use common sense when
removing a nominalization from a
sentence.
Nominalizations (cont.)
Example (all nouns highlighted in red):
The Association of Writing Programs will meet at noon
to hold a discussion on parking allocation for new
membership holders in the program.
Rewrite: The Association of Writing Programs will meet
at noon to discuss parking for new program members.
Notice that I left some nominalizations in the
sentence because the sentence would not have
the same meaning without them.
No Action in Verb
Uninteresting or unnecessary verbs in a
sentence.
You will most often find these next to
nominalizations.
Example:
Marketing was his specialization.
When you remove the nominalization, you
will probably remove this verb.
Rewrite: He specialized in marketing.
No Action in Verb Cont.
You fix no action in verb by using action
verbs. An action verb is a word that you
can perform as an action.
Example;
The dinner was good.
Can you perform was as an action?
Instead, use an action word.
The dinner tasted good.
Subject/Verb Separation
When you separate the subject and the verb
of a sentence by more than seven (7)
syllables.
Long separations between subject and verb
can make a sentence confusing to the
reader.
You fix subject/verb separation by keeping
your subject and your action/verb together.
Subject/Verb Separation Cont.
Example:
Managers, feeling that they need to stay on top
of their employees in order to get anything
done, can micromanage their employees.
Rewrite: When they feel the need to stay on top
of their employees to get anything done,
managers can micromanage their employees.
Tie In
• Sentences in a paragraph should tie together to
make the paragraph easier to follow.
• You want the reader to think about the ideas in
your work, not get bogged down in interpreting
your writing.
• Put old information at the beginning of
sentences.
• Put new information at the end of sentences.
Tie In (new in blue, old in green)
The Association of Writing Programs (AWP)
hosts a large conference once a year. The
conference invites creative writers from
around the world. These creative writers
often represent creative writing programs.
The creative writing programs can act as
sponsors for the AWP conference.
Sponsors receive special notice in any
AWP publications.
Parallelism
• Use when ideas within sentences have the
same function and importance.
Example:
The pollution came from factories belching
smoke and cars spewing exhaust.
Parallelism (cont.)
Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, and
yet) always signal a need for parallelism.
Nonparallel Example:
Three reasons why steel companies kept losing money
were that their plants were inefficient, high labor
costs, and foreign competition was increasing.
Rewrite:
Three reasons why steel companies kept losing money
were inefficient plants, high labor costs, and
increasing foreign competition.
Parallelism (cont.)
Use parallelism with comparisons to confirm the
likeness or difference using than or as.
Nonparallel Example:
The study found that ninety-five percent of welfare
recipients wanted to work rather than handouts.
Rewrites:
The study found that ninety-five percent of welfare
recipients wanted work rather than handouts.
The study found that ninety-five percent of welfare
recipients wanted to work rather than accept
handouts.
Parallelism (cont.)
Use parallelism with lists.
Nonparallel Examples:
Mary likes hiking, swimming, and to ride a bicycle.
The dictionary can be used for these purposes: to find
word meanings, pronunciations, correct spellings, and
looking up irregular verbs.
Rewrite:
Mary likes hiking, swimming, and riding a bicycle.
The dictionary can be used for these purposes: to find
word meanings, pronunciations, correct spellings, and
irregular verbs.
NonSpecific Language
• Quantity
– Some, Few, Many, Most (get specific
numbers and be able to cite where you got
them from).
• “There” and “It”
– There is a place and must be used as such.
– It is a pronoun that refers to the last noun in
the previous sentence. In most cases “it” is
not specific enough.
NonSpecific Language Cont.
You fix nonspecific language by being more
specific.
Examples:
Somebody said they liked your haircut.
Many students took the survey.
More specific:
Bob said he liked your haircut.
32% of the students took the survey.
Misplaced Modifiers
• A modifier is a word, phrase, or sentence
element that limits or qualifies the sense of
another word, phrase, or element in the
same sentence.
• A misplaced modifier happens when your
modifier modifies the wrong phrase or
could have more than one interpretation.
Misplaced Modifiers (cont.)
Examples:
She sat on the lap of a fat man wearing a ball
gown.
Rewrites:
While wearing a ball gown, she sat on the lap of
a fat man.
She sat on the lap of the fat man who was
wearing a ball gown.
Dangling Modifiers
• Dangling modifiers have the object being
modified missing from the sentence.
Example of Dangling Modifiers:
Having finished the assignment, the tv was
turned on.
Having finished the assignment, I turned on
the tv.
Dangling Modifiers
• More Example of Dangling Modifiers:
• After reading the article, it remained
unconvincing.
• The experiment was a failure, not having
studied the lab manual carefully.
• After reading the article, I still found it
unconvincing.
• They failed the experiment, not having
studied the lab manual carefully.
Negative Language
• Avoid using negative language.
• Instead of describing what is not, describe what
is.
Example of Negative Language
He is not tall.
Not only did he win first place, but he also set a world
record.
Rewrites:
He is short. or He is average height.
He won first place and set a world record.
Negative Language (cont.)
Negative Examples:
• Did not succeed
• Not on time
• Not late, not delayed
• Not continue
• Not efficient
• Not sad
• Not now
• Not present
Saying What Something Is:
• Failed
• Late, delayed
• On time
• Discontinue
• Inefficient
• Happy
• Later
• Absent
Faulty Word Choice
Faulty Word Choice can be
– Words that have more than one meaning.
– Words that do not have the correct meaning in the
context of the sentence.
– Words that should be plural/singular and are the
opposite.
– Homonyms (there, their, they’re).
Faulty Word Choice can also include:
– Grammar Problems.
– Spelling Problems.
Faulty Word Choice (cont.)
Examples of Faulty Word Choice:
The teacher was mad. (Was the teacher angry
or insane?)
After the meeting, the crowd was revolting. (Did
the crowd rise up against something or were
the merely ugly?)
Rewrites:
The teacher was angry.
After the meeting, the crowd broke into a riot.
Cultural Idioms
Cultural Idioms are slang terms or phrases
used in a specific culture that fail to
translate well to other cultures.
Example:
After the test, we went home and crashed.
Rewrite:
After the test, we went home and took a nap.
Sexist Language
• Sexist language includes any words that
leave out a gender.
• Even though some of these words are
common and accepted, this does not
mean that they are not sexist.
• To fix, make sure your terminology
includes both genders.
Sexist Language (cont.)
Sexist Language
• Stewardess
• Policeman
• Man-made
• Always using
“he” or “she” instead
of including both.
Non-Sexist Language
• Flight Attendant
• Police Officer
• Synthetic
• Make plural or use
the phrase “he or she”
or “she or he.”
Unnecessary Words
Words or phrases that are unnecessary to
get the point of the sentence across.
Example:
In order to meet the deadline set by the teacher,
we must work together on the project.
Rewrite:
To finish the class project on time, we must
work together.
Unnecessary Words (cont.)
Common Unnecessary
Phrases
• In order to
• Due to the fact that
• Has the ability to
• At the same time as
• At this point in time
• At the conclusion of
Phrases without the
Unnecessary Words
• To
• Because
• Can
• When, as
• Currently, Now
• After, Following
Redundant Pair
Two words combined with “and” that have
the same meaning.
To fix, choose one word only.
A Few Common Redundant Pairs:
– First and foremost
– Any and all
– Each and every
– Full and complete
– Fair and reasonable
Redundant Modifier
An unnecessary modifier.
An unnecessary modifier.
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Very unique
Various different
Rarely ever
Personal opinion
Continue on
Green in color
True facts
Mail out
Without the Unnecessary
Modifier
• Unique
• Different
• Rarely
• Opinion
• Continue
• Green
• Facts
• Mail