Audience, Style & Language: | |
Audience Write for educated individuals ages 16-65, meaning with such a wide audience that you should not assume that your readers know everything you do, or that you know everything your readers do. Style & Language As Roy Peter Clark recommends, activate your verbs, and keep your subjects and verbs as close to the front of the sentence as possible. Use there is/there are/it is/it was (i.e., expletive constructions) sparingly at the front-end of a sentence. |
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Use academic, formal prose containing no slang, contractions, jargon, or gender-biased language. Concerning that last limitation, make sure your nouns and pronouns agree; choose plural subjects over singular subjects (e.g., use individuals instead of individual). See examples and explanations below: NO: The reader can see that this work of art is about science; they can more specifically see that it is about the scientific discovery of planetary debris. . Why: reader is singular, and they is plural, so the noun and pronoun do not agree. NO: The reader can see that this work of art is about scientific discovery; he can more specifically see that it is about the scientific discovery of planetary debris. Why: using the pronoun he assumes a masculine reader and is, therefore, gender biased. YES/NO: The reader can see that this work of art is about scientific discovery; he or she can more specifically see that it is about the scientific discovery of planetary debris. Why: While gender neutral, and technically correct, using the pronouns he or she elongates the thought and will irritate readers. Why: using the plural subject readers avoids the gender-bias problem because the writer can now use they as a pronoun, instead of he. It also avoids the awkward problem of he or she. Finally, it avoids the problem of noun and pronoun disagreement. |
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To learn more about style within writing, see this resource. |