Good writing

Documents in good writing can easily accompany anyone round the world without giving any communication problem.








Invariably, all English language reference books are teaching their readers to construct sentences that are well structured and grammatically correct and capable of conveying their messages sucessfully with the right tone and style. Sentences are, therefore, not merely words strung together.

Now, look at the following sentence taken from an advertorial of a popular national English daily and see whether it depicts the techniques shown above:-

This gives us the unique position of presiding over the production and ingredients every step of the way from our healthy cows to finished products, to guarantee our customers absolute food safety, security and traceability.

The sentence does not appear to be well constructed. What do you understand by presiding over the production and ingredients...?

Obviously, a recast of the sentence is necessary to reflect its intended meaning/message.

One of the ways is : This gives us the unique position of supervising every step of the production process including choice of ingredients from our healthy cows to finished products and thus enabling us to guarantee our customers of absolute food safety, security and traceability.

No one is without knowledge except him who asks no questions.
-- West African Proverb

‘Distant’ vs ‘Distance’

It will be a bad day if you cannot differentiate which is correct and which is wrong between the two.






It is best to distant yourself, keep busy with your own life and try not to indulge in fantasising about her.

Do you notice anything wrong with the above sentence which is taken from a popular national English daily?

What about the following one which is taken from the same daily a few days later?

The American economic free fall played havoc with John McCain’s campaign, as he tries to distance himself from the unpopular Bush administration and walk away from his own history as a champion of government deregulation.

‘Distant’ is an adjective while ‘distance’ is a noun which can, however, be used as a verb.

By now, you should have realized that the first sentence is wrong as ‘to distant yourself’ therein should have been ‘to distance yourself’ as used in the second sentence picked from the same newspaper.

No endeavor is worse than that which is not attempted.
-- Mexican Proverb

Subject-verb disagreements

Environment requires a clean-up frequently and so do publications that constantly contain grammatical errors.






Major powers’opposition to trade talks are too strong.

The rising violent, sexual crimes against children in the country is alarming.

The by-election will be a close call and the hostilities on nomination day was a sign of how serious both parties are about taking the seat.

The above sentences are taken from a same national English daily on three different days. All the subject-words and verbs are highlighted to enable easy detection of the therein-contained grammatical mistakes which are somewhat concealed by the enlargements of the subject-words. Obviously, the verb-choices must have been erroneously based by the writers on the nouns immedately preceding the chosen verbs.

Such mistakes which are called 'subject and verb disagreements' are very frequently seen in its publications which should need a clean-up to achieve the first step towards good writings.

Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may not remember. Involve me and I'll understand.
-- Native American Proverb

The more, the merrier?

When one is enough, why give two?






Lapses and delays are inevitable when it comes to implementing new policies.

The above is one of the sentences in a Notice/Advertisement/Advertorial of the Government in a popular national English daily.

The sentence can be recast with fewer words without any change in meaning as follows:-

Lapses and delays are inevitable when implementing new policies.

When fewer words are used, fewer mistakes will be committed, and your readers will need lesser time to understand you.

Infinitives vs Gerunds

A bridge is like writing providing communication with the former conveying physical movements while the latter, flows of ideas.





Sometimes, you have to be attentive and logical to discover the common faults in writing.

Below is an example.

A group of people get together for no reason other than to do things in unison - and to have fun, of course.

The above sentence is taken from the OVERVIEW section of a popular national English daily.

At a glance, you will not notice anything wrong with the sentence.

Now, if you take out the phrase no reason other than, what remains is: A group of people get together for to do things in unison - and to have fun, of course.

Then, you will see that the sentence is unsound or ungrammatical - after the preposition for you cannot have an infinitive to do but you need a gerund doing (verbal noun) as the function of a preposition is to express some relation between two persons or things. In this case, it shows the relation between people and doing and should be followed by having, another verbal noun (instead of the infinitive to have).

The whole sentence should, therefore, have been: A group of people get together for no reason other than doing things in unison - and having fun, of course.

However, if you wish to retain the two infinitives, to do and to have, then we can make them noun-infinitives (to be in apposition with the noun reason) to define the reason and recast the sentence as follows:-

A group of people get together for a reason - to do things in unison and to have fun, of course.