Basic Rules of Style

Creating short sentences makes writing clearer, easier to understand and offers greater accessibility. Eliminate complex sentence structure, verbiage, jargon, redundancy and digression whenever possible. Try to keep sentences under 20 words. You can do this by:

• breaking long sentences into shorter ones
• limiting each sentence to 1 idea
• removing unnecessary words

Communicate with your language and impress with your ideas-not the other way around. Do not use a big word when a shorter, simpler one will convey the same meaning.

Put the purpose of the message or the main idea to be communicated first and then arrange the details so that they follow logically from one to the next. Put information that is not critical to your message at the end or in a sidebar, where the reader can choose to read it later.

Change passive sentences into active ones to energize your writing. For example, change:

The mouse was eaten by the cat
TO
The cat ate the mouse.

Eliminating linking verbs can also make your writing livelier. For example, change:

The car that is blue
TO
The blue car
OR
The story is an example of
TO
The story exemplifies

Instead of saying, "Negative structures make your writing harder to read" SAY "Positive structures make your writing easier to read." Double negatives are especially difficult to figure out such as "Not using negative structures makes your writing easier to read." Even single negatives can be difficult because readers must figure out what the positive would be before negating it.