Only use one exclamation mark, if any.

Exclamation marks generally do not have a place in formal business writing, though they may have a use in advertising text and narrative texts. However, if you do decide to use an exclamation mark, only use one at a time. Strings of exclamation marks are characteristic of amateur writers, and most readers will interpret them as a ploy to create artificial enthusiasm. In either case, using more than one exclamation mark at a time will damage your professional image and credibility.

Improper use: “This is the best sale of the year!!!!”
Proper use: “This is the best sale of the year!”

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Maintain one voice in a sentence.

This specifically refers to the use of active and passive voice. In brief, this tip means use either the active or the passive voice in a sentence, not both. Consider this sentence.

“I wrote the weekly project status report, but it wasn’t delivered on time.”

This sentence begins in the active voice but concludes in the passive voice. By using only one voice, the sentence will be more direct and more effective for accomplishing your purpose. Two possible revisions are as follows.

“I wrote the weekly project status report, but I didn’t deliver it on time.” (active)
“The weekly project status report was written but not delivered on time.” (passive)

Determine which voice will best accomplish your purpose and use it for the entire sentence.

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This is the strategy for day 140 in 300 Days of Better Writing, available at Hostile Editing in PDF, Kindle, and paperback formats.

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Create transitions to the next paragraph.

The final sentences of a paragraph have two functions. First, they need to provide a conclusion, impact statement, or action statement relevant to the single idea of the paragraph. Second, they need to create a transition to the idea of the next paragraph.

This transition is created by using words and phrases relevant to the next idea or by specifically noting how the current idea relates to the next one. Let’s look at two examples.

NONFICTION EXAMPLE:

End of paragraph one: “Throughout the grades, teachers build this disposition by asking questions that help students find the mathematics in their experiences, and by encouraging students to persist with interesting but challenging problems.”

Beginning of paragraph two: “Students who can successfully solve problems are able to apply and adapt a variety of appropriate strategies.”

[National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000]

The first paragraph discusses teaching strategies, and the second discusses types of problem-solving strategies. The transition is created by the underlined words at the end of the first paragraph, which relates to the idea described in the context of the second paragraph.

FICTION EXAMPLE:

Gloucester:
I hope they will not come upon us now.
King Henry:
We are in God’s hands, brother, not in theirs.
[Shakespeare, Henry V, act 3, scene 6]

Gloucester’s comment discusses actions by the enemy, using the word “they.” This reference to the enemy creates a subtle transition to the beginning of Henry’s speech, which starts with a reference to the enemy: “theirs.”

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This is the strategy for day 90 in 300 Days of Better Writing, available at Hostile Editing in PDF, Kindle, and paperback formats.

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Match gerunds with nouns, not with verbs.

A gerund is verb form, usually ending in –ing, that is the name of an action. For example, in the two sentences below, the first sentence uses “running” as a gerund naming an action, and the second uses “running” as verb describing an action.

“Running is a good pastime.”
“He was running down the street.”

Here’s the point: Gerunds act like nouns. When you are linking words and phrases in a series, remember that gerunds can only be linked with other nouns and not with verbs. Otherwise, your sentences will have problems with parallelism. You will be mixing nouns and verbs. Consider this sentence.

“The committee chairperson noted that she supported people who disagreed but not arguing.”

In this sample, the chairperson supports the action of disagreeing, but not the activity called arguing. “Disagreed” is a verb, and “arguing” is a gerund naming a particular type of action.

(We could make the claim that “arguing” is matched with “people who disagreed,” which would make this correct. Both of these are acting like nouns in this sentence. However, we’re still matching different types of things: a type of person with a type of action.)

To make this sentence correct, we need both words to have the same part of speech. Two possible revisions are as follows.

“The committee chairperson noted that she supported people who disagreed but not those who argued.” (This uses two verbs.)
“The committee chairperson noted that she supported disagreement but not argument.” (This uses two nouns.)

As you can see, when we revised this sentence to resolve the problem with parallelism, we found that one of the revisions, the second sentence, was very clear and concise. By solving the error, we produced an economical and forceful sentence.

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This is the strategy for day 246 in 300 Days of Better Writing, available at Hostile Editing in PDF, Kindle, and paperback formats.

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