Good news, kind of. I discovered a new sentence structure I hate. It’s a pattern I see often but only recently, while editing an article, realized it belongs in my writing hall of shame. Why would I ...

Whether you are writing a brief, a research memorandum or a client report, what you write, and how you write it, communicates your ideas to your audience. Are your sentences wordy and rambling, or ...

Letters represent sounds. Words are built from letters. A group of words makes a phrase. Add a subject and verb, and you have a clause. If that clause expresses a complete thought, we call it a ...

The hierarchical structure of sentences appears to be less important in human sentence processing than previously assumed, according to a new study of readers' eye movements. Readers seem to pay ...

A simple sentence is built from the minimum of a subject and a main verb. It can be very short in length (but doesn't have to be): 'The angry dog barks.' It puts across one simple idea: 'Rebecca sang.

Most writers assume they write well. Yet most writers grapple with the reality of writing as a black box. That is, we know that writing works, but we’re a bit fuzzy on what makes readers grasp the ...

An independent clause is basically a complete sentence; it can stand on its own and make sense. An independent clause consists of a subject (e.g. “the dog”) and a verb (e.g. “barked”) creating a ...