Category: Style

Proceeded

An overreliance on the adverb “then” or on adverb phrases like “then proceeded” makes your writing sound less like skilled academic or creative writing and more like a police report. Police officers are notorious for writing in...

Sentence Structure: Order of adjectives

Sometimes you want to describe a noun with two or more adjectives. There is a correct sequence for different types of adjectives. You might not need to memorize it, but you should know about it so you can check it when editing your writing.

Numbers

Different style manuals have different rules that explain when to write out numbers and when to use numerals. If your instructor has designated a particular style guide (MLA, APA, or CMS) for the assignment, then follow the...

Sentence Structure: For and Since

Use “for” and “since” with perfect tenses to talk about the duration of events which began in the past and continue until the reference point. Be careful to use the correct one for what you want to focus on: the length of time or the beginning.

Clichés

You should try to avoid clichés in your writing like the plague. If your writing is thick as thieves with clichés that are as old as the hills, it will sound unoriginal and mark you as an inexperienced writer. But if you happen...

Word Choice: Adverbs of Frequency

Adverbs of frequency describe how often things occur, or how often we do things. These can be used as part of a hedging strategy, to describe frequency without having to use exact numbers. Learning to use indefinite adverbs appropriately is something that can be developed through extensive reading and listening.

Repetitive Writing

Repetition in writing can be useful, poignant, or poetic, but sometimes repeating something too many times can bore readers or make it seem like you ran out of things to write about. Here is an example of a good use of...

Choosing the Right Words

Choosing the right word is often more complicated than translating, which often leads to issues of appropriacy. Translating without a clear understanding of vocabulary can lead to the use of words that are rare, obsolete, or belong to an inappropriate genre or register.

How Can I Make My Sentences Clearer?

Sometimes sentences are unclear because they are ambiguous, and other times because they have too many words. Usually sentences will be clearer if they have fewer words. So as you edit and reread your work, try to take words out to make your writing clearer.

Diction

In math, there can be more than one way to correctly solve an equation. Some might be easier or more difficult, but the most important thing is that you get the correct answer. For example, 2+2 and 1+1+1+1 and 2×2 and 22...