How to Analyze Your Prose Style for Readability

One guess: what best characterizes the intended audience for professional communication?

Thus: very readable your writing must be.

1. Be Concise2. Be Direct3. Use Proper Stress Emphasis

How to Be Readable

• Unnecessarily long words

• Redundancy• “Deadwood”• Jargon

Readability Principle 1: BE CONCISE.

a. Eliminate unnecessarily long words.

Instead of…Approximately

Demonstrate

Utilize

Subsequently

Construct

Assistance

Competencies

Initiate

Use…

About

Show

Use

Next

Build

Help

Skills

Start, Begin

b. Eliminate redundancy.Examples of redundancy:already existing

alternative choices

each and every

at the present time presently

continue to remain

c. Reduce “deadwood” (empty phrases).• it is my intent to show that• in my opinion• as a matter of fact• in fact• it may be said that• very• really• it is evident that• as is well known• it is noteworthy• the presence of• currently

d. Write in “plain English” wherever you can. (Avoid jargon, buzzwords, cliché, and “The Official Style.”)

Readability Principle 2: BE DIRECT.• Eliminate

unnecessary passive voice.

• Eliminate “zombie nouns” (aka nominalizations) where possible.

• Replace “vampire verbs” (to be, to have) with more active, specific ones.

2.a. Eliminate unnecessary passive voice.PRO TIP: if you can add the phrase […by zombies] after the verb, and the sentence makes sense, then the sentence is passive voice.

e.g. “It was requested [by zombies] that this memo be submitted to the project leader by 1:00 p.m. today.”

2.b. Make the verbs carry the weight of the sentence.

Cut out “to be” and “to have” as often as possible. Use active, specific verbs instead.

2.b. Use the simplest, most active form of the verb.Many people are resistant to reading on screen Many people resist on-screen reading.

FIX: There is a trail on Moscow Mountain called Headwaters that is fun for people who like to cross-country ski.

FIX: Our intention is to perform an audit on the records of the program.

MAKE THESE VERB PHRASES STRONGER AND MORE CONCISE:• is capable of

• is composed of

• is used to detect

• makes a decision

• makes a measurement of

• performs the development of

2.c. Replace “zombie nouns” (aka nominalizations) with strong, specific nouns.If it ends in…-tion -ism

-ity -ment-ness -age-ance/ence

-ship

-ability -acy

…it’s probably a “zombie noun.”

efficiency

reliability

attention

relationships

performance

knowledge

functionality

What verbs are at the root of these commonly used “zombie nouns”?RelationImprovementObservationReferenceApplicationDevelopmentConnectionAnalysisUtilizationVariabilityConformity

Readability Principle 3: USE PROPER STRESS EMPHASIS.

• Write tighter sentences.• Watch sentence length.• Focus your paragraphs

with a topic sentence.• Use summative modifiers.• Eliminate strings of

prepositions.

When we speak, how we emphasize or stress certain words affects the meaning.

• These pretzels are making me thirsty.• These pretzels are making

me thirsty.• These pretzels are making

me thirsty.

But emphasis in writing is different:• Readers of English look for meaning at the end of a

sentence or paragraph, known as the stress emphasis or stress position.

• Readers look for the topic in the beginning of a sentence or paragraph, but expect to get to the point of what you are writing at the end.

• If writers get this structure wrong, readers have to struggle to understand the point and will often misunderstand what the writer intends.

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1. Trim the end.Sociobiologists claim that our genes control our social behavior in the way we act in situations we are in every day.

2. Avoid writing metadiscourse, particularly at the end of a sentence.Job opportunities in computer programming are getting scarcer, it must be remembered.

3. Shift new information to the right.Questions about the ethics of withdrawing intravenous feeding are more difficult.

Revised: More difficult are questions about the ethics of withdrawing intravenous feeding.

3.a. Write tighter sentences.

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3.b. Watch sentence length.• Typically, modern business prose style uses shorter

sentences.• The average sentence length is between 14 and 18

words, but avoid applying this average as a rigid rule.• It’s a good idea to vary sentence length to avoid a

choppy cadence because that may cause you to write sentences in a paragraph that are not clearly connected to one another.

3.c. Focus your paragraphs with a topic sentence.• Underline the sentence in a paragraph that you think

best introduces or frames the rest of the sentences in that paragraph.

• If you can’t do that, then your paragraph is probably rambling without a point. Get a point, and write a topic sentence. Or, if you have a paragraph that is rambling on without a point, then consider deleting it entirely.

• If you find a sentence that governs the meaning of the paragraph, put it in the beginning.

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3.d. Use summative modifiers.A summative modifier works by summing up what’s been said so far in a sentence, and it can help you create the right emphasis. Notice how the bolded text below does this:

Economic changes have reduced Russian population growth to less than zero, a demographic event that will have serious implications.

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3.e. Eliminate strings of prepositions.

The condition of the patient was documented in the patient profile written by the nurse on duty during the after-hours shift.

To revise, use active voice and place modifiers before the nouns:

The after-hours nurse documented the patient’s condition in the patient profile.