ENGL 202 Project 1, Slidedoc 1

1. How to Analyze Your Prose
Style for Readability

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

3. Thus: very readable your writing must be.

4. 1. Be Concise
2. Be Direct
3. Use Proper Stress Emphasis
How to Be Readable

5. • Unnecessarily long
words
• Redundancy
• “Deadwood”
• Jargon
Readability Principle 1:
BE CONCISE.

6. 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

7. b. Eliminate redundancy.
Examples of redundancy:
already existing
alternative choices
each and every
at the present time presently
continue to remain

8. 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

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

10. 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.

11. 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.”

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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

15. 2.c. Replace “zombie nouns” (aka
nominalizations) with strong, specific
nouns.
If it ends in…
-tion -ism
-ity -ment
-ness -age
-
ance/enc
e
-ship
-ability -acy
…it’s probably a
“zombie noun.”
efficiency
reliability
attention
relationships
performance
knowledge
functionality

16. What verbs are at the root of these
commonly used “zombie nouns”?
Relation
Improvement
Observation
Reference
Application
Development
Connection
Analysis
Utilization
Variability
Conformity

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.
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3.a. Write tighter sentences.

21. 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.
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22. 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.

23. 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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24. 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.
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