Writing guides

Revise your own sentences

Short guides to the questions writers ask most when they revise. Each one explains when the pattern costs your reader, offers a few techniques to try, and says when to leave your sentence alone.

• How to fix long sentencesWhen a long sentence makes readers reread, and three ways to fix it without losing your voice: one idea per sentence, lists, and a short sentence to rest on.
• How to untangle hard-to-follow sentencesWhy readers lose track when a subject waits for its verb or clauses nest inside clauses, and four ways to restructure a sentence so it reads in one pass.
• How to make your writing flow from one sentence to the nextWriting that doesn't flow usually skips the link between sentences. Learn four ways to show readers how each sentence follows from the one before.
• Transitions: how to show readers where your argument turnsTransition words help only when they match the relationship between ideas. How to mark the turns that matter, choose the right word, and let structure do some of the work.
• Signposting: guiding readers through your argumentSignposts tell readers where an argument is going and how each part fits. How to announce a point, mark a pivot, sum up and tie a passage back to your main claim.
• Is my writing too hard to read?What makes a passage hard to read, when difficulty is fine for your readers, and how to lighten it: everyday words, shorter sentences, and terms explained.
• Unexpected words: when a word choice slows readers downRare words, technical terms and unusual pairings make readers stop. How to define, set up, space out or replace them, and when to keep them.
• When writing is too dense: unpacking packed sentencesDense prose packs ideas into strings of nouns with few connecting words. How to unpack noun strings, give each sentence one new idea, and add examples.
• Stacked phrases: breaking up chains of “of the”Chains like “the review of the history of the department” make readers track layer after layer. How to break up “of the” chains and “is a” definitions.
• Repeated words: which to keep and which to varyRepeating key terms keeps meaning clear; repeating incidental words makes prose circular. How to tell them apart, refer back, and combine sentences that restate.
• Passive voice: when to keep it and when to name the actorPassive voice keeps the focus on a result but can hide who acted. How to decide, name the actor, put the doer first, and when the passive is the right choice.
• Action nouns: turning nominalizations back into verbsWords like implementation, assessment and development hide actions inside nouns. How to turn them back into verbs, give each action a doer, and keep terms of art.
• How to vary sentence length and rhythmSentences of the same length in a row sound monotonous. How to land a point with a short sentence, combine related sentences, and vary how sentences open.