Proofread to Avoid Wordy Phrasing

Let's face it--all of us write wordy, illogical sentences when we are in a hurry. The trick is to take the time, once you've written a complete draft, to read back through and clean things up.



Here is a good example from that investment newsletter I've mentioned before:



"Bernanke patiently explained to the member of Congress making this accusation that what she was calling money was actually not really money at all, but rather temporary reserves loaned to banks to stop fears of a crash and depression."



In my workshops, I like to call this "bopping it twice when once will do." A quick proofread would have led the writer to conclude that one or the other of the words in red needed to go. Then he could have made a quick decision about what to keep and what to get rid of. I liked keeping "really" after the "not."



I also made a second little punctuation adjustment to clarify the wording. I moved the comma between "rather" and "temporary" so that "but rather" clearly goes together. Otherwise, it sounds as if he is talking about "rather temporary reserves" (whatever those would be).



The sentence should read as follows:



"Bernanke patiently explained to the member of Congress making this accusation that what she was calling money was not really money at all, but rather, temporary reserves loaned to banks to stop fears of a crash and depression."



For those of you who are about to send me a comment stating that I don't understand how busy you are--that you don't have time for writing, then proofreading, then fixing--I disagree. Every one of us procrastinates while we think in our heads about what we are going to put on paper. My suggestion is to put it on paper as quickly as you can and THEN use your time wisely to proofread and polish.

Confusing Semicolon with Comma

I read an interesting article this week about how churches are using Twitter and other social media networks to appeal to young people. Good idea, perhaps.

The following sentence in the article had a problem--it used a semicolon where a comma should have been:

At Christ Tabernacle Church in Queens; the Rev. Adam Durso and his brother Chris, the youth director, keep in contact with their flock, sometimes hourly, on a half-dozen social media sites.

A semicolon should only be used to separate one clause from another (or items in a series from each other). In this sentence, the first six words are an introductory PHRASE, so they should be set off from the main sentence with a COMMA, not a SEMICOLON.

At Christ Tabernacle Church in Queens, the Rev. Adam Durso and his brother Chris, the youth director, keep in contact with their flock, sometimes hourly, on a half-dozen social media sites.

Even if you Twitter, keep those semicolons for special occasions!

Who is the Felon? Who is the Judge? Verb Confusion!

Corruption in local government runs rampant these days, and the City of Birmingham is no exception. John Katapodis was convicted here last week of using a charity designed to donate computers to needy children as his own personal cookie jar.

Unfortunately, the reporter who wrote about the guilty verdict got his noun and verb relationships confused and wrote a sentence that suggested the JUDGE rather than the convicted FELON was led away after the verdict was read:

"He (Katapodis) showed no reaction after Bowdre announced the verdict and was led away by marshals as a convicted felon."

In order to fix this sentence, the reporter needed to put the TWO actions involving Katapodis next to each other. Judge Bowdre needed to be somewhere other than in the middle between the two. The two Katapodis actions were these:

1) He showed no reaction.
2) He was led away by marshals.

I should also note that the judge (Judge Karen Bowdre) is a woman.

This sentence would be much clearer and more effective written this way:

After Bowdre announced the verdict, he (Katapodis) showed no reaction and was led away by marshals as a convicted felon.

Subject Verb Agreement Problem Hinders Good Columnist

I enjoy reading a certain column about investment trends and strategies, but I am bothered by the fact that this columnist does not proofread for good grammar. Here is an example of a problem sentence from an entry last week:

"By implication he was saying that the White House offer of huge regulatory powers were not appealing and had not won him over to allow Treasury control of money."

Whoops! The subject of this sentence is "the White House offer," and there is only ONE offer in the sentence. The prepositional phrase "of huge regulatory powers" does NOT determine whether the verb is singular or plural. Therefore, this sentence should read as follows:

"By implication he was saying that the White House offer of huge regulatory powers was not appealing and had not won him over to allow Treasury control of money."

Please proofread your own writing to make sure you are not using plural verbs with singular subjects.

Have a great day!

Be Picky About Prepositions!

My favorite produce market sent out an e-mail this morning about its holiday weekend schedule. The e-mail contained the following sentence:

We will be open normal business hours now until Friday the 3rd but will be closed Saturday July 4th and re-open Monday July 6th at 8am.

The preposition "until" means "up to a certain point in time." As used in this sentence, it suggests that normal business hours are only in effect UNTIL Friday, but I suspect the market plans to conduct normal business hours on Friday and then close on Saturday.

Therefore, the better choice would be to say:

We will be open normal business hours now through Friday, July 3, but will be closed Saturday, July 4, and reopen Monday, July 6 at 8 a.m.

If you look closely, you will see that I tweaked a couple other things in this sentence:

1) It is not necessary to write "rd" or "th" after a day, even though you say the ending out loud.

2) "a.m." should be written with periods so it does not look like the word "am."

3) The word "reopen" is usually written without the hyphen.

Now I'm being picky!

Once you've smoothed out your grammar, I do hope you will get outdoors and take advantage of the wonderful farmers' markets and produce stands available this time of year. Around here, it's time for Chilton County peaches as well as local blueberries and other summer goodies.

I'd like to welcome any new blog followers from the ALDOT office in Mobile. I did a workshop there last week and thoroughly enjoyed working with them.

Parallel Structure Makes Sentences Smoother

An advertisement this week for a "government backed Home Equity Conversion" contained the following sentence:

Learn how the Government provides home equity conversions to seniors to preserve what they have, avoid outliving income, and retaining financial independence while never leaving home.

Whoever created this sentence meant to suggest that this type of home equity conversion would help senior citizens do THREE things:

1. preserve what they have
2. avoid outliving their income
3. retain financial independence while never leaving home

Unfortunately, because the sentence does NOT put all three of these things in the same format, the reader has trouble figuring out the meaning. In addition, because the sentence does not use wording that expresses the cause/effect relationship, the main point is weak.

Here is my suggestion for a much-improved sentence:

Learn how the Government provides home equity conversions to help seniors preserve what they have, avoid outliving their income, and retain financial independence without having to give up their home.

I hope you agree that this is much clearer. Please leave a comment below to let me know what you think.

COULD OF?? SHOULD OF?? WOULD OF??

Sometimes the casual expressions we use out loud creep into our written language in incorrect ways. Here is a good example of that from an article about a high school extemporaneous speech competition:

It was well said, and he probably could of gone on for another 6 minutes and 30 seconds.

When we say "could have" out loud, it SOUNDS like "could of," but it is not supposed to be written that way. OF is a preposition, but this phrase needs the helping verb HAVE to be correct. The sentence should read as follows:

It was well said, and he probably could have gone on for another 6 minutes and 30 seconds.

The 3,500 students who came to Birmingham last week for the United States Extemporaneous Speaking national competition at Oak Mountain High School were challenged to draw an unknown topic from a tray, spend 30 minutes researching it, and then prepare and memorize a seven-minute speech. Quite impressive.