Clarity And Grace Summary

Actions Joseph M Williams and Joseph Bizup authors of Style Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 2014. Lesson 3 Actions, the author, illustrates the importance of being able to identify the character in the subject and their actions in the verbs, without the overuse of nominalizations. We express judgments of writing by utilizing words such as clear, direct, concise, or focused praise writing, or words like unclear, indirect or complex that often abuse writing. Telling Stories about Characters and their Actions Use the subjects of verbs to convey the main characters when telling stories. The use of verbs with detail actions is of most importance in the flow and clarity of the sentence. As readers, we prefer sentences that are more direct where the main characters and actions are subjects and verbs (p. 30).
Fairy Tales and Academic or Professional Writing The writing can seem obscure and pointless if the characters are not the subject, and abstract nouns are the actions.
Verbs and Actions …show more content…
The reader may feel as though the writing is too complicated if too many abstract nouns are used. For instance, words such as resist for resistance, different for the difference, or careless for carelessness and so on. Again, readers will get a better understanding when the writing is direct, clear and readable, this will happen if the writer connect subjects to characters and verbs to action. Look at exercise 3.1 for a clearer understanding of how to identify verbs, adjectives, and nominalizations. See exercise 3.2 for practice in detecting the subject, character, verb, and