Correction

Pronouns

•Subjects and pronouns must agree

•Everyone, everything, nobody, someone, no, every, each, either, neither, anyone, none – singular!

•Everyone was happy to donate some of his or her money. Avoid he/she by making the subject plural

•Avoid misplaced/dangling modifiers – e.g. They only wash dogs in shorts. Walking on the ceiling, he noticed spiders.

•It must be clear what the pronoun is referring back to – e.g. John told David that he didn’t get the position.

Which is easier to understand?

1.They can, among other things, provide guidance on the processes and procedures.

2.Among other things, they can provide guidance on the processes and procedures.

Hint - Put time and place phrases and extra information at the beginning or end

Negatives

• One negative is easier than more.

e.g. Less wasted time spent dealing with unreliable tradesmen, would not be without huge benefits.

→less time would be wasted and more benefits gained, by dealing with reliable tradesmen

→more time and benefits would be gained by dealing with reliable tradesmen.

Passive

•Active sentences are easier (and generally shorter) to read than passive.

•Use passive to avoid saying ‘I’, when the subject is (un)known, obvious, unnecessary or to emphasise the object.

From the experiment, we can see that X is true (Active)

From the experiment, it can be seen that X is true (Passive)

Researchers carried out an experiment to..(A)An experiment was carried out to…(P)

•Have you repeated words often?

–Use a relative clause to join 2 sentences so the subject isn’t repeated

–Use a thesaurus to find an alternative word

•Delete extraneous words

•Avoid sexist vocabulary

•Do not use trite expressions

•Use words correctly

Superfluous phrases:	Substitute with:
In close proximity to	near, nearby
In order to	to
With regards to	regarding
Beginning in the year 1969	beginning in 1969
On account of	because of, due to
On the grounds of	because of, due to
Until such time as	until
At all times	always
For the express purpose of	to, for
At this point in time	now, at this time
Made the discovery that	discovered
In this day and age	nowadays, today
Gave an indication	indicated
Subsequent to	after, then
In the first place	first,
In the process of writing	writing
In the neighbourhood of	around, about
For the duration of one year	for one year
In the normal course of events	normally
At a later date	later
Of a friendly nature	friendly
Have the belief that	believe