So how do we produce readable and clean scientific writing? One of the good elements of style is to avoid adverbs and adjectives (Zinsser 2006). Adjectives and adverbs sprinkle paper with unnecessary ...

MODIFIERS give us information about a noun or pronoun in a sentence. They are important because they help to paint the true picture of the information we seek to convey to our reader or listener. The ...

James J. Kilpatrick, on vacation this week, shares a column published in March 2004: Among the most readable publications in the field of law is Supreme Court History, published every four months by ...

The misplaced (or dangling) modifier is one of the sneakiest grammar errors — once it slips into your writing, it may be difficult to catch and correct, especially when the modifiers are longer ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. The “rules” under which hyphens are used to connect multiple modifiers, like “well(-)known man,” are varied and ...

The beef had been aged dry for 30 days, and it changed my life. Not the way you’re thinking. I didn’t eat the life-changing meat. I just read about it in an article I was editing — and my relationship ...

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you don’t know something, so you just avoid it altogether? For instance, because I don’t know how to swim, I avoid parties on mega yachts. I can’t tell ...

The preceding chapter showed how sentences can be streamlined by reducing their adjective clauses to adjective phrases — a simple process that omits the relative pronouns “that,” “which,” “who,” “whom ...