Brenna Lemieux’s Post

So true, Brenna Lemieux. I think 'really smart people,' as you mention them, sometimes fall victim to their 'smartness' and tend to abuse the "ing," excessive adjectives, and other 'smart-sounding' words to make sure the reader really understands just how smart they are. I guess making those suggestions is our added value as editors 😜

Brenna Lemieux, "has" is a weak verb. So are "be" and "do." I can understand avoiding gerunds, but substituting weak verbs does not strengthen readability, IMO. You're basically gutting what otherwise was lively writing.

I completely agree with your advice. That is why I am a bit puzzled that, in schools, they do not teach crisp writing, but rather tell students to add adjectives and 'make it more interesting'.

Great list Brenna Lemieux, thank you. Here are a few of my peeves: 1. Starting a sentence or a new paragraph with a connector ('however', 'but', etc.) simply to signal continuity of thought. Most readers are smart enough to notice continuity without a forced adverb or conjunction. 2. Dumping too many unremarkable quotes because you want to play it safe and don't want to lend your own voice to whatever your story is trying to say. 3. Not using the em dash, because someone told you it sounds like AI. 4. Not using the serial comma - I don't care what your reason is. (Obvious caveat: It's much easier to edit another's words than one's own.)

The gerund clauses drive me nuts too. They are commonly used in marketing where every word counts, but look weird (most of the time) in serious pieces. Strangely, ChatGPT LOVES them. Enhance traditionally had a meaning of further improve something, but seems to be confused with improve a lot of the time. As for my pet hates, double hedging drives me nuts (This suggests that the following may be true possibly in the following situations... argh!!!) and 'not only... but also...' used when 'and' would suffice

Ooooh agree with all these! I’d add: - hugely long and complex sentences- if it’s more than 20 words, see if you can add a full stop - paragraphs similarly should be less than 150 words usually - subheadings at least every 300 words, ideally every 200 or so- otherwise it’s hard to read!

Useful tips. I'm saving this for future use. Thanks!

In my experience, you need to write for your audience. On a top level, writing in academia is very different than writing for corporate. And, even writing in corporate differs depending on manager. I wrote for a trader - it was all bullets, not one complete sentence. I wrote for an engineer, it was tight, short paragraphs with a few bullets. Composing an email is different than a text and writing for a non native English speaking audience is different again. Bottom line: tailor your message to your audience.

I actually try to avoid ‘to be’ verbs because they tend to be weaker and less precise. YMMV, obviously.

Check the word count. Cut at least 10% (advice from Josh Spector I've taken to heart). My advice: Read from beginning to end for flow, then read from end to beginning for grammar.