Notes and Acknowledgements

This presentation gives a brief overview of some aspects of writing style and correct usage that I think are important, but is far from comprehesive.

I highly recommend reading good style manuals for advice and inspiration that goes far beyond what I can cover here. Some of the key references I used in preparing this presentation were:

Steven Pinker: The Sense of Style: This is an excellent guide to good writing, drawing heavily on research evidence from psychology and linguistics
William Zinsser: On Writing Well: Another excellent guide (from which I have shamelessly stolen the title of this presentation). The first half of the book has a lot of useful guidance on style and usage. The second half deals with specific forms of writing, which is less relevant for us but still a good read.
William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White: The Elements of Style: The classic short reference to clear and concise writing. Some of their pronouncements are a bit dated now (and some are rather odd) but still a book that every writer should have on their bookshelf.

Style

OMIT

NEEDLESS

WORDS

Avoid

Excessive signposting

Say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you've said

Don't do that

Aim to give the minimum needed for the reader to understand where they are being led

Avoid

Professional navel-gazing

“In recent years, an increasing number of psychologists and linguists have turned their attention to the problems of child language acquisition. In this article, recent research on this process will be reviewed.”

These are wasted words

The reader is interested in what is known about the problem, not the fact that people have studied it

Avoid

“Scare quotes”

Lazy writers often use scare quotes to distance themselves from a common idiom

Be confident in your own voice

If you're not comfortable using an expression without quotation marks, you probably shouldn't be using it at all

Avoid

Compulsive hedging

apparently, rather, to some extent, etc.

Have confidence to stand behind what you are saying

If you need to qualify a statement or convey the magnitude of an effect, do so explicitly

Avoid

Excessive jargon and technical terms

Some is unavoidable—and indeed desirable—when writing for a technical audience

But much is unnecessary

Rule of thumb: if there's an adequate non-technical term, use it

And avoid non-standard abbreviations

Prefer the active voice

Helps keep the reader engaged
(they can see someone doing something)

Keeps the prose moving forward

Often makes your writing crisper and more concise

Prefer the active voice

But don't overdo it

The passive voice can help you to direct the reader's gaze:

ACTIVE

PASSIVE

See that lady with the shopping bag? She's pelting a mime with zucchini.

See that mime? He's being pelted with zucchini by the lady with the shopping bag.

Nominalisation

Turning a verb into a noun (with a suffix like -ance, -ment, -ation)

Used thoughtlessly, these can drain the life out of your prose

Participants read assertions whose veracity was either affirmed or denied by the subsequent presentation of an assessment word.

We presented participants with a sentence, followed by the word TRUE or FALSE.

Comprehension checks were used as exclusion criteria.

We excluded people who failed to understand the task.

Adjectives and abverbs

Many adjectives and adverbs are redundant

If the adjective carries the same meaning as the noun,
or the adverb as the verb: Omit it

If the adjective or adverb adds meaning, keep it

Grammar and Usage

Myths

Grammar myths

Grammar rules are not unchanging laws of nature,
or proclamations handed down from on high

They are tacit conventions among users of a language

Many supposed “Rules of Grammar” ignore this fact

Don't split infinitives

This is the “rule” that claims Captain Kirk should not have said
to boldly go where no man has gone before
but rather boldly to go or to go boldly

This is a myth. Ignore it.

Don't end a sentence with a preposition

What are you talking about?

Another myth. Ignore it.

Don't begin a sentence with a conjunction

This is useful advice, up to a point

Starting a sentence with a conjunction can be a sign that you've broken the sentence incorrecly

But used deliberately, there's nothing wrong with it

Grammar and Usage

More sensible advice

Avoid inappropriate shifts

Maintain a consistent vantage point within a sentence

Tense (past, present, future)
Person (first, second, third)
Voice (active, passive)
Type of discourse (direct quotation, indirect report)

Switching vantage point unexpectedly will just confuse your reader

Consistent number

The number of the subject should agree with the number of the verb:

The bridge is crowded / The bridges are crowded

Slightly more complex, but the same simple rule applies:

The bridge to the islands is crowded / The bridges to the island are crowded

But what about:

None of them was home / None of them were home?
Is none singular or plural? Generally either is acceptable (but they have slightly different feel)

Consistent number

Likewise for any:

Are any of the children coming / Any of the tools is fine

But neither, either, anyone, everyone, somebody, everybody, and nothing are all singular
Two singular nouns joined with and are usually plural

A fool and his money are soon parted

Collective nouns can be either, depending on whether you conceive (or want your reader to conceive) of them as a single entity or as individual members

Consistent number

Almost done with number!

Prepositions don't change the number of the head:

A man with his dog is coming up the path / Two men with a dog are coming up the path

Or is tricky:
Two singular nouns joined with or are singular; two plural nouns are plural
There is no real consensus on the number of a singular and a plural joined with or

Most grammar guides would say the verb agrees with the number of the noun closest to it
But perhaps best to rewrite the sentence to avoid the problem, if possible

Very unique?

Can you grade the degree of an “absolute” adjective?

Many purists say no

Accepted usage would suggest otherwise:

a more perfect union
nothing could be more certain
a more equal allocation of resources

But steer clear of very unique regardless

Gender-neutral pronouns

Singular “they” works in most contexts

Sometimes it helps to rewrite the sentence with a plural subject

Or rewrite so that no pronoun is needed

Commas

Commas have two main jobs:

Separating parenthetical phrases from the main body of the sentence:

The audience, which had at first been indifferent, became more and more interested

Separating items in a list

Commas, and other connectors

Don't use commas join two complete sentences

“There isn't much variety, everything looks kind of the same”

Instead, write two sentences (if they are conceptually independent)

If the two sentences are conceptually independent: just write two sentences
If there is an explicit connection you want to make, use a comma followed by a connector (e.g. and, but, except)
If they are conceptually linked, but you don't feel the need to state an explicit connection, use a semicolon
If the second sentence interrupts the flow of the discussion, you can use a dash

Apostrophes

Apostrophes have two main purposes:

Contraction: isn't, you're, we'd, etc.
Marking genitive (possessive) case: He is his mother's son

But not for pronouns: his, hers, yours, etc.

Not for marking plurals (the grocer's apostrophe):

Apple's 99c each!

Becoming a Better Writer

Read

Some journal articles are well written; many are not!

Read good edited non-fiction (i.e. books, from a quality publisher)

Read style manuals—for their content, and as an exemplar of the craft

And notice good writing when you read it

Look It Up

Get a good dictionary (and thesaurus)

If you're not sure about the meaning or usage of a word, look it up

Recognise the Curse of Knowledge

Once you know something, you forget
what it's like for someone else not to know it

Remind yourself that your readers don't know everything you know about your specific subfield of research
And they definitely don't know everything about what you did in your study

Your job as a writer is to show them, clearly and intuitively

Write

And more importantly:

Edit!

Your first draft will be sloppy, but you can't edit until you've got something written down

Write

Read your writing out loud (or at least out loud inside your head)—preferably some time after you wrote it

If it doesn't sound right to you, it won't sound right to others
(although the converse is not necessarily true)

On Writing Well