It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences - June Casagrande 2010

It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences - June Casagrande 2010

Introduction

Who cares? Making sentences meaningfull to your reader

Conjunctions that kill: Subordination

Movable objects: Understanding phrases and clauses

Size matters: Short versus long sentences

Words gone wild: Sentences that say nothing – or worse

Words gone mild: Choosing specific words over vague ones

A frequently overstated case: The truth about adverbs

Are your relatives essential? Relative clauses

Antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers: Prepositional phrases

Dangler danger: Participles and other danglers

The writing was ignored by the reader: Passives

You will have been conjugating: Other matters of tense

The being and the doing are the killing of your writing: Nominalizations

The the: Not-so-definite definite articles

The writer and his father lamented his ineptitude: Unclear antecedents

To know them is to hating them: Faulty and funky parallels

Taking the punk out of punctuation: The problem with semicolons and parentheses

You don't say: Descriptive quotation attributions

Trimming the fat: Expressions that weigh down your sentences

The major overhaul: Streamlining even the most problematic sentences

On breaking the “Rules”: Knowing when to can the canons

Grammar for writers

Punctuation basics for writers

The deadliest catches: The most incriminating errors and how to avoid them