Tips on Good Grammar

Tips on writing grammatically correct and easy to read sentences. Writers should:

Tip 1: Avoid starting a sentence with a verb ending in "ing"

Sample written by a student:

"Investigating the demographics of the target market and the geographical location of Springfield Football Club."

All sentences must have a subject i.e. the person or thing that performs the doing.

In the above case, the sentence does not say who is doing the investigating.

If you start a sentence with a verb with "ing" you are very likely to make this type of error.

The above sentence would be more grammaticaly correct if it were written as follows:

The committee should investigate the demograhics of the local area surrounding Springfield Football Club.

In this case "the committee" is the subject of the sentence.

Another sample written by a student:

Wanting to increase the female participation at Springfield Football Club, policies and procedures must be enforced respecting their rights and privileges.

This would be better written as:

Springfield Football Club will develop and enforce policies and procedures that respect the rights of female participants.

Often a change of word order is required, as in the above example, to fix the problem.

Tip 2: Avoid starting or finishing a sentence with a preposition

(Preposition = with, at, by, from, to, under, over)

Sample written by a student:

"With the increasing levels of child obesity, Springfield Football Club must entice the target group into the program."

This would be better written as:

Springfield Football Club must entice the target group into the program in response to increasing levels of child obesity.

Again, it is a matter of word order. If you are tempted to start a sentence with a preposition you should try to change the word order.

Tip 3: Avoid using personal pronouns in business documents

(Personal pronoun = I, we, you, they)

The student wrote:

"I used a variety of methods to obtain information for the proposal."

This would be better written as:

A variety of methods were used to obtain information for the proposal.

Tip 4: Try to make sentences simple.

The student wrote:

"It is clearly evident that the total number of men participating out-weighed the amount of female participants." (18 words)

This sentence could be simplified as in the following examples:

Which of the above alternatives do you prefer?

Tip 5: Ensure you provide only useful information

The student wrote:

"There are millions of different products to do video editing."

A sentence of this nature does not provide the reader with any useful information. The sentence is merely "padding".

 

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