Characters 張芳瑄 S 葉宗翰 S

Understand the Importance of Characters

1a.The CIA feared the president would recommend to Congress that it reduce its budget. 1b.The CIA had fears that the president would send a recommendation to Congress that it make a reduction in its budget.

Understand the Importance of Characters 1c.The fear of the CIA was that a recommendation from the president to Congress would be for a reduction in its budget.

Understand the Importance of Characters 1d.There was fear that there would be a recommendation for a budget reduction.

Understand the Importance of Characters Make the subject of most of your verbs the main characters in your story.

Diagnosis and Revision

To get characters into subjects: 1. where you should look for characters 2. what you should do when you find them

Diagnosis and Revision n.→ s.+ v. add conj. to connect the words into sentence

Diagnosis and Revision Governmental intervention in fast- changing technologies has led to the distortion of market evolution and interference in new product development. When a government intervenes in fast- changing technologies, it distorts how markets evolve and interferes with their ability to develop new products.

Diagnosis and Revision adj. → n.

Diagnosis and Revision Medieval theological debates often addressed issues considered trivial by modern philosophical thought. Medieval theologians often debated issues that modern philosophers consider trivial.

Diagnosis and Revision Reconstructing Absent Characters General statement often has absent characters.

Diagnosis and Revision As we are writing, always imagine the readers are sitting in front of us, and use ‘‘you’’ as often as we can. Sometimes ‘‘you’’ seems to be inappropriate, so we can use ‘‘they’’ instead.

Characters and Passive Verbs

Using the passive and without saying who does: 1. protect the doer 2. the doer is the writer

Characters and Passive Verbs Sometimes the passive could help us read sentences more easily.

Characters and Passive Verbs Pick a point of view and stick to it.

Characters and Passive Verbs Academic reports often use the first person I or we as well.

Passives, Characters, and Metadiscourse

Metadiscourse is the language you use when you refer not to the substance of your ideas, but to yourself, your reader, or your writing. Metadiscourse appears most often in introductions, where writers announce their intentions. They typically use the first person: I claim that…, I will show…, We begin by…, and again at the end, When they summarize: I have argued…, I have shown…

Passives, Characters, and Metadiscourse Some writers and editors avoid the first person by using the passive everywhere, but deleting an I or we doesn’t make a researcher’s thinking more objective. In fact, the first-person I and we are common in scholarly prose when used with verbs that name actions unique to the writer.

Noun + Noun + Noun

One more stylistic choice does not directly involve characters and actions, but we discuss it here because it can distort a sentence so that the form of an idea fails to match the grammar of its expression. Some grammarians claim we should never modify one noun with another, but that would rule out common phrases such as stone wall, student center, space shuttle, and many other useful terms.

Noun + Noun + Noun Strings of nouns feel lumpy, so avoid them, especially ones you invent. However, a long compound noun includes a technical term in your field, keep that part of the compound and unpack the rest

A Last Point: The Professional Voice

Every group expects its members to show that they accept its values by adopting its distinctive voice. The apprentice banker must learn not only to think and look like one, but to speak and write like one, as well. Too often, though, aspiring professionals think they write in the club’s most complex technical language. It is an exclusionary style that erodes the trust a civil society depends on, especially in a world where information and expertise are now the means to power and control.

A Last Point: The Professional Voice Apart from theoretical conceptualization there would appear to be no method of selecting among the indefinite number of varying kinds of factual observation which can be made about a concrete phenomenon of field so that the various descriptive statements about it articulate into a coherent whole, which constitutes an “adequate” a “ determinate” description. Adequacy in description is secured insofar as determinate and verifiable answers can be given to all the scientifically important questions involved, What questions are important is largely determined by the logical structure of the generalized conceptual scheme which, implicitly of explicitly, is employed.

A Last Point: The Professional Voice Without a theory, scientists have no way to select from everything they could say about a subject only that which they can fit into a coherent whole that would be an “adequately” or “determinate” description. Scientists describe something “adequately” only when they can verify answers to all the questions they think are important. They decide what questions are important based on their implicit of explicit theories.

A Last Point: The Professional Voice Whatever you describe, you need a theory to fit its parts into a whole you need a theory to decide even what questions to ask and to verify their answers.

A Last Point: The Professional Voice When you read or write a style that seems complex, you must determine whether it needs to be so complex to express complex ideas precisely. Accordingly, a style should be as complex as necessary, but no more.

A Last Point: The Professional Voice If you detect a needlessly complex style when you read, look for characters and actions so that you can unravel for yourself the complexity the writer needlessly inflicted on you. When you write, use the same tools to detect when you are guilty of gratuitous complexity and, if you are, revise. Write to others as you would have others write to you.

Summing Up

Readers judge prose to be clear when subjects of sentences name characters and verbs name actions.

Summing Up If you tell a story in which you make abstract nominalizations its main characters and subjects, use as few other nominalizations as you can Use a passive if the agent of an action is self-evident Use a passive if it lets you replace a long subject with a short one Use a passive if it gives your readers a coherent sequence of subjects Use an active verb If it is a metadiscourse verb When possible, rewrite long compound noun phrases

Refer from: Style LESSONS IN CLARITY AND GRACE Tenth Edition Joseph M. Williams Gregory G. Colomb