3) Editing for cohesion and conciseness
Use Signposts. Signposts are basically small "marker" words and phrases that let your
reader know where you're going1. Instead of "The original treaty of 1923..." try "Three examples
will bear this out. First, in the original treaty of 1923...Finally, and most seriously, capital punishment
strikes at the heart of morality itself..."
Write in simple sentences: Simple sentences have a subject-verb-object (SVO)
structure, as in “the dog ate my book”.
Why are SVO sentences easy to understand? Upon encountering the first noun of the
sentence, readers attribute to that noun the role of agent who will act upon an object.
When reading “the dog ate my book”, you match grammar (subject-verb-object) to
meaning (agent-action-object). When the expectation is violated, sentence comprehension
becomes more difficult. This is what happens when using nominalization and passive
voice.
Avoid Nominalizations: Nominalizations are abstract nouns made from verbs and
adjectives. Examples include explanation (from verb explain) and proficiency (from
adjective proficient). Nominalizations usually end in -tion, -ent, or –ence. More often
than not, nominalizations make writing unnecessarily dense. Compare the two following
sentences:
(a) The intention of some participants may have been to complete the study as fast as possible.
(b) Some participants may have intended to complete the study as fast as possible.
Example (b) is more direct because it's free of the nominalization "intention."
Avoid passive voice. Readers expect the first noun of the sentence to be the agent (to
actively do something). This expectation is violated in passive voice sentences, as the
noun is the object of the action rather than the subject. Take for example this sentence:
“Gender difference in emotional display was the topic of our investigation.”
Subject: "The gender difference in emotional display"
Agent: "we" (as implied by "our")
Rewritten: We investigated gender differences in emotional display
Avoid object extracted relative clauses: Consider this example: “the participants this
statistical analysis assessed were 25 years old”. In this sentence, participants are the
object of the assessment rather than being the agents doing the ‘assessing’. Compounding
the problem, ‘participants’ is an animate noun (keep in mind, participants are people too
1 Taken from: Trimble, John R. Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing
). Usually, people do things instead of having things done to them. After reading “the
participants” a reader will assume that ‘participants’ are the agent. Contrast that example
to one including an inanimate object, as in “the handout Diego wrote is great”. As
‘handout’ is inanimate you kinda expect it will be an object of the verb rather than a
subject. In this case, comprehension is easy. As always, the grammar rules should be put
at the service of clarity. If you are writing a commentary on how good or bad the handout
is, you should use passive voice. On the other hand, if you are writing a teaching
evaluation, then active voice would be most appropriate in this case (Diego wrote a great
handout).
Avoid unnecessary use of complements (“of this
(a) The purpose of this study was to assess the gender differences in emotion display.
(b) This study assessed gender differences in emotion display.