Using the Writing Process Effectively, Part 3: Planning with Idea Maps

The idea map is another useful planning technique for writers wishing to work offline. Similar to mind mapping and concept mapping, the idea map helps writers to lay out ideas before drafting. 

The illustration shows a completed idea map created by a scientist proposing the hiring of two researchers for his lab. During the brainstorming phase, he grabs a sheet of blank paper and a bunch of varied color makers. First, he draws a circle in the middle of a sheet with his topic: "need two researchers." Next, he draws spokes from the circle, one color per spoke, to highlight the supporting points: benefits, problem, causes, recommendations, plan. Then come more sub-points and sub-sub-points within those supporting ones.

For the organizing phase, he structures the points as they will appear in his draft, starting with the ask (1. need two researchers), following the listed numerical and alphabetical order. You can imagine what this writer will be discussing in his proposal by reading the idea map he has created.

Using the Writing Process Effectively, Part 2: Planning with Idea Tags

Many techniques are available for the planning step of the writing process. I focus on three of them in this and the next two posts: idea tags, idea maps, and idea lists. All of them are indispensable in breaking writer's block and generating talking points for your document.

Idea Tags, Step 1: Brainstorming

Idea tagging is an off-screen planning method for those who like to work off the computer or cannot access one. It involves using self-stick notes, one per idea. I strongly recommend using stickies measuring 2" X 1 1/2" (roughly 5.1 cm X 3.8 cm) because as many as 24 can fit on a standard 8 1/2" X 11" (21.6 cm X 27.9 cm) sheet of paper, and many more on a cleared table or desk. This technique is a lot like storyboarding, the old-time Hollywood method of outlining a story in development. While my illustration uses words, you can draw pictures to represent ideas (e.g., a stick figure to signify staff, a house for facility, and a money bag for budget).

In the image above, I am dropping ideas for a report on a seminar I attended. Notice the randomness of the thoughts. I am simply brainstorming without attention to structure or quality. This is the creative step of idea tagging. 

Idea Tags, Step 2: Organizing

Next comes the organizing step, when I get MAD (Move, Add, Delete) about my idea tags. In the next illustration, I have moved the stickies into separate rows, each row representing a paragraph. I have also added ideas, in red ink as I moved the stickies around. And at the bottom, I have deleted ideas that have no place in the report by tearing them up. This is the analytical step of idea tagging.

I may not have every idea in front of me (I've left out cost, location, accommodations, and more), but at least I can start drafting my report based on the plan I've created with these idea tags.

Using the Writing Process Effectively, Part 1: Knowing When to Plan

Challenging work-related writing requires three steps:

• Step 1: Planning – brainstorming and organizing ideas. In this step, you are listing thoughts from your notes research, or off the top of your head, on or offscreen, that need to appear in your draft. 
• Step 2: Drafting – writing a rough copy. When drafting, you are prizing volume of content over quality of expression because you'll have time to make necessary changes in the third step.
• Step 3: Quality Controlling – revising, editing, proofreading. In this three-part step, you protect your REP (Revise, Edit, Proofread): revise by moving, adding, and deleting ideas; edit for tone, clarity, conciseness, and correctness of grammar, diction, punctuation, and mechanics; and proofreading for overlooked errors. 

If you can skip planning and start drafting, go right ahead. Why waste your time planning if you know what to write? 

But you'll know you need to plan—to generate and structure ideas for the first draft—in any of the following situations:

• Writer's Block – You get stuck, your eyes fixated on the blinking cursor, your fingers paralyzed, your mind locked on the last idea.
• Premature Perfectionism – You spend more time revising, editing, and proofreading one idea than you do moving ahead to the second, third, and fourth ones.
• Procrastination – You find yourself wanting to do anything other than finish that darn draft.
• Stress – You feel the whole writing experience is too painful, either mental exhausting or emotionally taxing.

The beauty of the planning step is its low expectations of perfectionists. By definition, you are not experiencing writer's block or stress in the planning step because you are just dropping on a page or the screen ideas as they pop in your head. You'll write single words, short phrases, or even as pictures to represent those ideas with no attention to quality language. In fact, you don't even need to use English. I often encourage nonnative speakers to use their first language in the planning step if it helps them. 

So how do we plan a draft? Stay tuned for the next post.

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 20: Ambiguity

Writers in technical professions, such as scientists, engineers, accountants, and auditors, will warn colleagues, clients, and vendors against using ambiguous language. Precision is an apparent hallmark of business and technical writing. By definition, precise diction would exclude most interpretative language like excellent business (instead of $43 million business), remarkable recovery (instead of 16% recovery), and poor packaging (instead of 2 of 10 packages were mislabeled).

If you think critically, however, you'll notice that even the parenthetical language above is laden with subjectivity. A $43 million business is not excellent compared to Amazon if you're measuring revenue, a 16% recovery is not so remarkable if the business lost 23%, and 2 of 10 mislabeled packages do not constitute poor performance if Quality Control detected the errors before shipping.  

Here's the problem for writers: Nearly all non-mathematical language (and even mathematical language in certain contexts) we hear and read is ambiguous. If you and I decide to share the cost and benefit of buying a dozen eggs for $1.60, we would each pay $0.80 and take six eggs each. Nothing ambiguous about that. But we might inconclusively argue about the "freshness" or "largeness" or the "bargain" of those eggs. You may have more money than I, so the $0.80 investment would be greater for me. And you may not like eggs, causing you to resent sharing the cost of a useless item. 

Truth be told, ambiguity used judiciously is a beautiful thing. William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity attests to the value of ambiguity. No short story or novel we have ever read is not rich with ambiguity. Think of how authors describe characters. A "courageous" man might look like Abraham Lincoln to you and like Denzel Washington's character in Courage Under Fire to me; a "smart" woman might sound like Nikki Haley to you and like Susan Rice to me. That's why we love fiction. It sparks our experiential imagination. It allows us to fill in the blanks, to picture what we will. 

The same holds true in business writing when a nonprofit thanks you for your "generous" gift, your company awards you for "exemplary" service, and you write to a service provider about a "satisfying" experience. The trick for writers is to understand the ambiguity of language and to use it to their advantage by qualifying the meaning of their words through descriptive narrative.

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 19: Connotation

Do not be surprised when you hear a manager or peer advise you to avoid using a particular word because of what it connotes, meaning the feeling that the word may suggest beyond its dictionary definition, or what the word denotes. 

Three situations come to mind. I one did a consulting job for a major financial advisory firm. When I requested a red marker to highlight a key point on a flipchart, the client told me that red was a banned ink color because it implies "being in the red," a frightening prospect for portfolio managers. Really? Another time I accepted as a compliment an elder telling me I was special to her, yet even an apparently innocent word like special could turn pejorative, as in "He is a special case," which might mean an exception to the preferred standard, or a simply a problem. And sometimes the connotation depends on who is in the communication. The now-dated expression "You go, girl" is always better said by one woman to another than by a man to a woman, as the man may seem sexist or demeaning.

If you're thinking that this is the be-all and end-all of political correctness, remember that we all have language threshold and that language has always been political. For sure, certain choice words directed toward anyone at the wrong time could cause a major meltdown. 

Nevertheless, connotation can add humor, spice, or drama to a written or spoken message, as long as we steer clear of people's age, sex, race, religion, national origin, abilities or disabilities, sexual orientation or identification, economic status, or political persuasion. (Did I cover them all?) 

There's still plenty of room for connotation if you consider how words can take on both positive and negative shades. The word meticulous (denotation: careful, precise), can mean to show due attention to detail, or to judge in a picayune manner. We need to think about the reason and the object of our connation for appropriateness, and then think twice for potential unintended interpretations. 

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 18: Periphrasis

I am a big fan of using one word to replace two or more. I would rather write, "Call me to get a parking permit" (7 words) than "Call me in order to get a parking permit" (9 words), or "You have passed the manager's test" (6 words) than "We are informing you that you have passed the manager's test" (11 words), or "I request your help" (4 words) than "I am writing to request your help" (7 words).

At times, however, an extra word can add emphasis to writing. Take the case of periphrasis, the use of multiple words to convey the meaning of a single word, usually in place of a prefix (a meeting before the conference instead of a pre-conference meeting) or a suffix (he is more wise than I thought instead of he is wiser than I thought). 

Here are some examples of when periphrasis might have greater impact than its more concise version:

• Ana did attend all workshop sessions, so she should get a completion certificate. (The words did attend give more emphasis than attended.)
• Beatriz won't admit it, but she did go to Mardi Gras during the pandemic. (In using did go rather than went, the writer applies greater contrast between the claim and the denial.)
• Corazón is the most kind person I met during that difficult time. (Most kind seems even more superlative than kindest because of the otherwise difficult time the writer was having.) 

Needless to say, avoid periphrasis when the extra words are meaningless: Let's meet is better than Let's have a meeting; We need to agree is better than We need to arrive at an agreement; and You must decide is better than You must make a decision.

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 17: Idiom

Using idioms is a popular way to put color into your writing. An idiom is an expression that breaks logic semantically (meaning) or syntactically (grammar). Here are examples of each:

Semantic Idioms

If we choose the wrong path, we could get into hot water. (get into trouble)

He always submits his work at the eleventh hour. (at the last minute) 

When it comes to paying the bill, she always says she's broke. (lacking money) 

You need to learn to go with the flow. (be agreeable)

Syntactic Idioms

Not on your life would I run for president. (for no reason)

No way will I donate to such a radical cause! (definitely not) 

What's up, Charlie? (what's new?) 

I have been living from hand to mouth during the pandemic. (survive with hardly the basics) 

Occasionally, nonnative English speakers tell me that they want to master idioms because they will appear more conversant with the language. They are spot on, to use an idiom.

Improving Your Style Through Diction Part 16: Asyndeton

When dropping a conjunction from a phrase or sentence, we are using asyndeton. This literary device comes close to the way we often express ourselves in common speech.

Notice how the semicolon replaces and in the sentence I'll write the report; you'll present it to the team. 

Writing in comma splices, a technical error to grammatical purists, seems to be the fashion. Here are examples of how comma splices are the result of using asyndeton: 

• Dana worked hard on the project, she needs a vacation.
• He writes reports for the regulator, slide presentations for the department, proposals for the Board. 
• Please reach me email, Leslie by text.

Asyndeton can create elements of surprise or power when used sparingly. Abraham Lincoln used asyndeton in his Gettysburg Address ("government of the people by the people, for the people") so we should look for opportunities to use it, to captivate our readers (I just used asyndeton). 

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 15: Hyperbole

Hyperbole is so overused it's taken over our lives. I know: I'm being hyperbolic. Hyperbole, exaggerations we do not mean to be taken literally, is a literary device most teachers at school and managers in the office would tell us to avoid. I say not so fast. 

Hyperboles appear in everyday speech and writing, especially on social media. Some hyperboles we use seem harmless enough: Ana is loaded with money, Billy has tons of projects, Carlee walks faster than a cheetah runs, Danny reviewed the accuracy of the protocol a million times. 

So how might we use hyperbole appropriately at work? Here are some examples I've come across that affected me positively with zero offense factor:

• Evelyn's support during the project saved the team.
• Franco's slide presentation spellbound his audience.
• Gayle will get back to you in a flash.
• Hank is an Einstein when it comes to analytics.

So sure, use hyperbole, but be mindful of your teachers' and managers' admonitions to keep them as real as you can for the intended effect.

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 14: Anthropomorphism

While personification renders human qualities to nonhuman things, especially natural forces like wind, fire, and ocean, anthropomorphism attributes human qualities to animals. I use this literary device when I say, as I have, the rabbits conspire to reap the harvest of my vegetable garden; or the male cardinal, knowing how I await the sight of his beauty, sashays along my fence before flying off to entertain my neighbor; or her dog, realizing his complaining is pointless, chooses the more practical path of stretching out on the living room floor.

Those who think anthropomorphism in business writing is foolish haven't considered that companies and brands like Jaguar, Puma, and Red Bull named themselves after animals. Of course, sports teams are notorious for doing the same: Chicago Bulls, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Eagles, and Minnesota Lynx, to name only a few.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 13: Personification

Plant and vehicle lovers tend to use personification when speaking of the object of their affection. I heard a friend say her plants say thank you when they blossom in response to her watering them, and another tell me about how his motorcycle understands all kinds of road conditions. Personification, the attributing of human qualities to nonhuman things, challenges readers as well as listeners to use their imagination. 

We use personification when we say those meatballs and sausages were mean to us, or the sun caresses our flesh, or a hard rain smacks our windshield. We personify computers all the time when we say they know a lot, work fast, and die suddenly.

Sometimes, writers can get carried away with personification, as does Ernest Hemingway in translating Spanish speakers to English in For Whom the Bell Tolls, when the mountain rebels make their machine guns "speak" or Eugene O'Neill, whose Christopher Christopherson in Anna Christie says, "dat ole davil, sea—she knows!" But thoughtful personification adds excitement to our writing and even brings clarity to it.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 12: Simile

Simile is a figure of speech similar to a metaphor, but one we are more likely to use in everyday speech. For example, we often hear a beautiful child is as cute a kitten, or a clumsy person is like a bull in a china shop, or a mighty one is as strong as an ox. 

Instead of using metaphor to show someone or something directly applies to someone or something else, we use simile to show someone or something is like someone or something else. The key word in using simile is like or as:

• The proud janitor moves her mop like a queen brandishing her staff.
• She entered the meeting like a general.
• The singer hits those high notes like an angel. 

As with metaphor, we can use simile in writing at work. In fact, we do when we write, "Our office gets as hectic as rush hour in Times Square," or "Business in the personal protective equipment industry during the pandemic has soared like a meteor."

Using simile paints pictures for our readers like no other literary device, so invent some.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 11: Metaphor

To describe our world, we often use metaphor, which is a figure of speech directly applied to someone or something to show resemblance, although the association cannot be literal. We use metaphors in multiple ways:

• people with other people (My sister is the queen during our family's multi-city Zoom meetings.)
• people with animals (The boxer became a bull terrier as he slashed through the ring.) 
• people with things (Mother was the glue of our family.)
• things with other things (San Sebastian is the heaven of food.)
• places with other places (The platoon waded through hell in the rat-infested swamp.) 

Metaphors enliven not only fiction writing but our business correspondence. Instead of writing "Our company is at the top of the IT field," we might write "Our company stands atop the Everest of IT."  

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 10: Consonance

As with assonance, consonance is the repetition of sounds within the same phrase or sentence, the difference being that assonance uses vowel sounds and consonance consonant sounds. Notice the repetition of w and wh sounds in this example from one of my poems, "Do You See These Buildings?":

They wondered whether this was what

they signed up for, if all the awful waiting

through the waste was worth their while.

In this next example, the r sound repeats:

The rabbits running across garden wreaked destruction, tearing through the mesh barrier and devouring the carrots, parsnip, and radish.

Consonance brings simple pleasures to the reading experience. 

  

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 9: Assonance

By repeating the same vowel sounds within words in the same phrase or sentence, assonance creates musicality to a passage. Here are some examples:

• When the fans deem the Dream Team has run out of steam, it seems they scream louder.
• All of us were awed by Paula's thoughtful offer.
• The man who owns the apple stand on Samson Way passed away yesterday, I'm sad to say.

Using assonance at strategic points of a story or essay adds a dash of poetry. 

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 8: Alliteration

Alliteration, the use of identical initial consonant sounds on a string of words, can realize a desired mood. Alliteration is usually taught as a poetic device, but it also works well in prose. Here are four examples:

She pressed her palms together in prayer promising piety to Providence.

The water felt like waves of sweat as I swam swiftly in the sweltering swamp.

He thunderously thrust his way through the thorny thicket.  

Woe to those wastrels for their wanton ways! 

Exaggerations? I suppose. When using alliteration, the idea is not to hatch a tongue twister but to create an effect that complements your point. Used sparingly and strategically, it can enliven your story line.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 7: Neologism

Another rhetorical device for adding color to writing is the neologism, which is a relatively new word (e.g., frenemy, a friend with whom one frequently quarrels) or a standard word that has taken a new meaning (e.g., friend, now used as a verb meaning to add someone to a personal social media platform). As you might imagine, technological and cultural changes are the source of most neologisms. 

We do not have a set time for when a neologism stops being one. Some people would still consider vaping (2014) and staycation (2005) neologisms but not selfie (2006) and photobomb (2008). I think this is mostly dependent on the beholder's age and the word's pervasiveness.

Some of us might create a neologism of our own among our select circles. For instance, if one of a group of your friends, Terry, is perpetually late for get-togethers, you might say to everyone in that group, "Show up on time. Don't Terry it." 

I was surprised and, to say the least, deeply disappointed, to find online suckbomb defined as a word coined in 2009 to describe weak opponents in fantasy leagues. Absolutely not true! I coined it 43 years earlier, in 1966, in the James Monroe Housing Projects of the Bronx, to mean someone who is truly, indisputably, and unalterably useless or annoying. Don't tell me people don't rewrite history! If I could get my hands on the suckbomb who took credit for suckbomb.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 6: Synecdoche

The figure of speech synecdoche, the use of a term to refer to something more specific or more general, is a useful device for adding creative spice to your writing. Synecdoche falls into two categories, microcosm and macrocosm. 

We employ microcosm synecdoche when referring to someone or something specific to mean what it represents in general, as in "They're no Einsteins" as a stand-in for geniuses, or "The houses in that neighborhood are Hearst Castles" to mean mansions. 

Alternatively, we use macrocosm synecdoche when referring to someone or something in general to mean what it represents specifically, as in "New Yorkers run in Central Park year round" to mean just that select group of people who run in Central Park no matter where they're from, or "the United States declared war" to mean only the United States Congress declared war. 

You probably use synecdoche in everyday conversation more than you think, but once you do begin to think about it, you'll get more creative with this valuable literary device.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 5: Onomatopoeia

Words are never the thing they describe, but that does not stop them from trying. Take onomatopoeia, a word that sounds like the word it describes. Just by their sounds, can't you just picture the head getting a crew cut upon hearing buzz, the bodies that splash when hitting the water, or the floor being cleared with a broom that sweeps?

Literary Devices does a good job of explaining onomatopoeia and providing examples, in case you want to use this tool to enliven your writing.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 4: Loanwords

The next time you hear people speaking a foreign language when suddenly an English word pops into their conversation, consider two points about word choice. First, they are using a loanword, a word adopted from one language by speakers of another language, more than likely to compensate for lack of a better word in their native tongue. Second, loanwords enrich language like few other linguistic conventions.

English has borrowed from too many languages to mention in a brief blog post: 80 percent of English words come from 350 languages, according to Dictionary.com. Most of us don't even realize how many of loanwords we commonly use, to name a few, amen from Hebrew, agriculture from Latin, beef from French, chess from Persian, cruise from Spanish, democracy from Greek, icon from Russian, zenith from Arabic, and zero from Japanese.

Why borrow words? (Steal is more like it, because we do not return loanwords.) Among many reasons, sometimes a language just cannot come up with a single word to mean what its users want to express. One of my favorite examples is the German zeitgeist, meaning the spirit of the time. The word trend falls short to capture this spirit, if you know what I mean.

You do not have to be an etymologist to appreciate the strange routes some loanwords morph into English. This is one of the delights of learning new words. How did they get here? 

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 3: Watch Those Homographs, Homophones, and Homonyms!

Reviewing our writing for errors with homographs, homophones, and homonyms is helpful since our inattention to them is the cause of many miscues.

Homographs are words that look the same but have different meanings. Knowing that a sewer is a drain as well as a person who sews will prevent you from writing sower, a person who plants, when you mean sewer.

Homophones are words that sound the same but can be spelled differently and have different meanings, such as affect, a verb meaning to influence, and effect, a noun meaning result. My trick to remembering these two is recall the a in affect because it is an action, while the e in effect is the end, or result. 

Homonyms are words that have the same spelling but different meanings, such as lie, the verb meaning to recline, and lie, the verb meaning to tell a falsehood. Not knowing the difference has made most people write, "Let's lay in the grass" when they mean "Let's lie in the grass."

Due yew sea watt eye mien?

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 2: I Ain't Buying Ain't Ain't a Word

What is the fascination with ain't? Why ain't ain't a standard English word? Let me tell you, whoever made up ain't was on to something sensible.

Let's back up a minute. You might have noticed that we can contract common personal pronouns with the being verb in the present tense (I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're) and in the future tense (I'll, we'll, you'll, he'll, she'll, it'll, they'll), but not in the past tense. While our standard language does allow for contracting negatives with being verbs in the past tense (wouldn't) and future tense (won't), it does not completely allow for it in the present tense (yes to we, you, or they aren't and to he, she, or it isn't, but no to I amn't). There just ain't a word for that one, if you follow my meaning. What a headache this causes for speakers and writers craving consistency in their language. No wonder some linguistic genius made up ain't.  

But language ain't, I mean isn't, logical. Of course, I'm used to this inconsistency, so I avoid it in professional speech and writing, but I still use it to be playful (e.g., It ain't gonna happen) or to replicate common speech (e.g., She said, "It ain't my job"). But I still ain't using ain't in formal communication.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 1: Parts of Speech

I've concluded the 20-part series on improving style through syntax (word order). The links to the series topics appear at the end of this post. Now I begin another 20-part series, this one on improving style through diction (word choice). To get us grounded on words, I'll start with a quick review of the eight parts of speech, which I'll be discussing in segments of this series.

The eight parts of speech fall into four broad categories: basics (nouns, pronouns, and verbs), modifiers (adjective and adverbs), connectors (prepositions and conjunctions), and interrupters (interjections).
This sentence uses every part of speech:

Wow, Kay—Eve and I are very excited that a highly respected university in California accepted you so quickly into its program. 

BASICS
1. Noun (Kay, Eve, university, program, California). A person (Kay, Eve), place (California), or thing (university, program)
2. Pronoun (I, you, its). A stand-in for a noun (I replaces me, Philip Vassallo) you replaces Kay, and its replaces the name of the university).
3. Verb (are, accepted). An action (accepted) or state of being (are).

MODIFIERS
4. Adjective (excited, a, respected). A qualifier of a noun or pronoun (excited qualifies the noun Eve and the pronoun I, and respected qualifies noun university).
5. Adverb (very, highly, so, quickly). A qualifier of a verb, adjective, or another adverb (very qualifies the adjective excited, highly qualifies the adjective respected), quickly qualifies the verb accepted, and so qualifies the adverb quickly).

CONNECTORS
6. Preposition (in, into). A connector showing the relationship between a noun, pronoun or noun phrase and other parts of a sentence (in connects the nouns university and California and into connects the verb accepted and the noun program).  
7. Conjunction (and, that).  A connector of any part of speech as well as phrases and clauses to coordinate ideas (and connects Eve and I, and that connects everything before it, except Wow, Kay, and everything after it.

INTERRUPTERS
8. Interjection (Wow). An expression of surprise or emotion that does not function as any of other seven parts of speech.

A good way to see how word choice affects style is through Constance Hale's book Sin and Syntax: How to Create Wicked Good Prose.

***

Read previous posts on improving style through syntax:

Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases

Part 2: Dropping Pronouns for Clarity

Part 3: Dropping Pronouns for Conciseness

Part 4: Avoiding—No, Managing—the Comma Splice

Part 5: Remedying Run-ons

Part 6: Freeing Fragments

Part 7: Placing Adverbs

Part 8: Placing Adjectives

Part 9: Placing Prepositional Phrases

Part 10: Placing Conjunctions

Part 11: Placing Interjections

Part 12: Placing Verbs

Part 13: Placing Nouns

Part 14: Placing Pronouns 

Part 15: Keeping Parallel Form

Part 16: Breaking Parallel Form

Part 17: Using Active Voice for Clarity, Conciseness, Fluency
Part 18: Using Passive Voice for Value, Context, Tact

Part 19: Valuing Variety
Part 20: Valuing Repetition

Improving Style Through Syntax, Part 20: Valuing Repetition

For the last post of this series about improving writing style by a deeper understanding of syntax, I stray from all those good things we learned in school about style to look at the power of repetition through four famous examples in chronological order.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This 1859 novel starts with a 119-word paragraph with six unadorned monosyllabic words, “It was the best of times” followed by nine other six-word independent clauses repeating it was the, followed by a unique adjective, followed by the repetitive of to begin 10 shortest possible 2-word prepositional phrases. Let’s do the math here: 10 uses each of it, was, the and of, not to mention the double use of age, epoch, and season. Thus, 45 of 60 words (66.7%) are repeats! Then following this remarkable linguistic recycling are the double uses of we had and we were all going. The repetition is downright dizzying and, more importantly, memorable.

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The first sentence of this 1864 novella sucks you right in: “I am a sick man.” More striking is the Dostoevsky narrator’s repetitious use of I—19 times in the first paragraph of 176 words. Adding to the I’s his self-obsessed use of me once, my four times, and it twice to indicate his liver and imagined disease, the 26 self-references total 14.8% of the word count. By the end of this paragraph, we have no doubt who the story will be about and how precarious his emotional state is.    

“We Shall Fight on the Beaches” by Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill delivered this 3,737-word speech to the British House of Commons on June 4, 1940 conceding a major military loss at Dunkirk after his famous blood, toil, tears and sweat speech three weeks earlier and before his arguably more famous This was their finest hour speech two weeks later. He says we shall far more times than the one that immortalized his speech—10 in total within a 73-word span (20 words, or 27.4%). What make the repetition more vivid are the eight instances of we shall fight in the middle sandwiched by We shall go on to the end in the beginning and We shall never surrender at the end. (Do not tell me Churchill did not read A Tale of Two Cities!) Powerful rhetoric!

“I Have a Dream” by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In his monumental speech of August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, to an audience of 250,000, King says I have a dream 9 times within the space of 229 words (36 words, or 15.7%). He then follows these words with let freedom ring 10 times in a more concentrated 101 words (30 words, or 29.7%). And for a topping, he closes by quoting for the black spiritual free at last in the final 9 of 14 words (64.2%), the only other 5 words being the awe-inspiring thank God almighty I am. Often touted as the greatest speech of American political history, the 1,667-word masterpiece is graced with powerful repetition in other places as well.  

Repetition used wisely will impress an idea in the imagination and move along the rhythm of the writer’s intended mood. I almost want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for reading this post.

***

Read previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases

Part 2: Dropping Pronouns for Clarity

Part 3: Dropping Pronouns for Conciseness

Part 4: Avoiding—No, Managing—the Comma Splice

Part 5: Remedying Run-ons

Part 6: Freeing Fragments

Part 7: Placing Adverbs

Part 8: Placing Adjectives

Part 9: Placing Prepositional Phrases

Part 10: Placing Conjunctions

Part 11: Placing Interjections

Part 12: Placing Verbs

Part 13: Placing Nouns

Part 14: Placing Pronouns 

Part 15: Keeping Parallel Form

Part 16: Breaking Parallel Form

Part 17: Using Active Voice for Clarity, Conciseness, Fluency
Part 18: Using Passive Voice for Value, Context, Tact

Part 19: Valuing Variety

Improving Style Through Syntax, Part 19: Valuing Variety

One of the abiding principles of good writing style is to maintain reader interest by creating sentence variety in numerous ways. Here I'll list just four:

• Types. The four types are declarative (I am here.), interrogative (Are you there?), imperative (Come here.), and exclamatory (I'm so glad you're here!) 
• Openers. We can start a sentence in subject-verb order (Jane works for you.), a prepositional phrase (On Tuesday morning, Jane works for you.), a participial phrase (Needing money, Jane works for you.), an infinitive phrase (To make money, Jane works for you.), the subject separated from the verb (Jane, who needs money, works for you.), and other possibilities.
• Lengths. We can go short (I like learning. You like learning. Let's stay together. We will learn from each other.) or long (Since you and I like learning, let's stay together to learn from each other.) 
• Syntax. Great writers mix standard sentences with comma splices, run-ons, and fragments, although I would discourage people from employing this practice in formal writing at work because comma splices, run-ons, and fragments are considered technical errors. But for that very reason, great writers use them, adding an element of surprise to their narrative. In the next example, the first sentence is standard, the second a comma splice, the third a run-on, and the last a fragment, all reflecting the high emotion of the writer: How could she do that? It was so premeditated it was so brazen. Was she toying with him, was she trying to get the reaction that he gave? On their wedding day? I'd bet you want to know what she did and how he reacted.

***

Read previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases

Part 2: Dropping Pronouns for Clarity

Part 3: Dropping Pronouns for Conciseness

Part 4: Avoiding—No, Managing—the Comma Splice

Part 5: Remedying Run-ons

Part 6: Freeing Fragments

Part 7: Placing Adverbs

Part 8: Placing Adjectives

Part 9: Placing Prepositional Phrases

Part 10: Placing Conjunctions

Part 11: Placing Interjections

Part 12: Placing Verbs

Part 13: Placing Nouns

Part 14: Placing Pronouns 

Part 15: Keeping Parallel Form

Part 16: Breaking Parallel Form

Part 17: Using Active Voice for Clarity, Conciseness, Fluency
Part 18: Using Passive Voice for Value, Context, Tact

Improving Style Through Syntax, Part 18: Using Passive Voice for Value, Context, Tact

If you read the previous post on why you should use active voice, then you might rightly wonder, why ever use passive voice. I could think of three reasons: value, context, and tact.

1. Value. Sometimes the doer of the action is not as important as the receiver. In such cases, the passive would be preferable. The example below favors the passive voice because it focuses more on the Unabomber's arrest than who arrested him. (I say this with all due respect to the FBI and no insult intended to the critical and dangerous work its agents do.)

Active (focus on the less important FBI agents): FBI agents arrested the Unabomber.

Passive: The Unabomber was arrested.

2. Context. Other times, the doer is so clear from the context that it does not merit mentioning. In these cases, again the passive would be preferable. Example:

Active (attention to an obvious doer): Construction workers erected the building in 2002.

Passive (attention to the receiver): The building was erected in 2002.

3. Tact. If exposing a doer would be embarrassing or inappropriate, passive voice would also work well. Example:

Active (inappropriate attention to the doer): Carol made a mistake during the presentation.

Passive (more tactful omission of the doer): A mistake was made during the presentation.

***

Read previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases

Part 2: Dropping Pronouns for Clarity

Part 3: Dropping Pronouns for Conciseness

Part 4: Avoiding—No, Managing—the Comma Splice

Part 5: Remedying Run-ons

Part 6: Freeing Fragments

Part 7: Placing Adverbs

Part 8: Placing Adjectives

Part 9: Placing Prepositional Phrases

Part 10: Placing Conjunctions

Part 11: Placing Interjections

Part 12: Placing Verbs

Part 13: Placing Nouns

Part 14: Placing Pronouns 

Part 15: Keeping Parallel Form

Part 16: Breaking Parallel Form

Part 17: Using Active Voice for Clarity, Conciseness, Fluency