Casagrande: Elevate your writing to a professional level

Have you ever found yourself reading something — an article, a piece of fiction, some business correspondence — and noticed that it came off as amateurish in a way you couldn’t put your finger on? I’m not talking about AI writing. And I’m not talking about one of those cheesy spy novels with heroes who shout, “I don’t fear death!” before driving a motorcycle off a skyscraper, or a bargain bin romance novel with dialogue like “Take me, Reynaldo!” I’m talking about a subtle lack of professionalism that carries from sentence to sentence and that undermines a reader’s respect almost subconsciously.

Well, after years of working as an editor, I’ve come to understand some of the problems underlying subtly bad writing. In many cases, it’s a simple matter of failing to follow well-worn writing advice. Here are a few pitfalls that can make your writing seem less than professional.

Do-nothing adverbs
You can quickly run to the window. Or you can just run to the window. Your protagonist can scream furiously. Or he can just scream. A hero can have a dauntingly serious problem. Or she can have a serious problem. Adverbs that try to add oomph to an action inadvertently suggest the action isn’t oomphy enough on its own. They backfire. Here’s a simple test to decide whether your adverb should survive your red pen: If it adds information, like “She quickly hung up the phone,” it can stay. But if its information is already self-evident, like “She quickly ran to the window,” chop it out.

Too much being, not enough doing
The verb “be” is critical in every form of English communication. But it’s a poor substitute for action. Consider the sentence: “The reason for her visit to the crime scene was to get two pieces of information.” The main clause here is “the reason was”: abstract and devoid of action. A more skilled writer might take a different approach: “She drove to the dead man’s apartment and picked the lock, determined to find two missing pieces of the puzzle.” Now our main actions are driving and lock-picking, which are dynamic and interesting in a way “the reason was” is not. The best writers find interesting actions like these on which to hinge their sentences whenever possible.

Generalized nouns
What’s more interesting: “The people arrived at the outdoor space seeking refreshment and activities to pass the time” or “The bikers roared in to the honky-tonk’s dusty parking lot thirsty for cold beer, high stakes billiards and maybe some skull-cracking to quench their boredom”? The difference is specificity. The noun “bikers” is more visual and engaging than the generalized “people.” “Cold beer” is more sensory than “refreshment.” “Skull-cracking” is a very, very specific type of “activity” that helps transform this bland description of events into a real story. This rule applies to every type of writing, not just action-packed fiction: Choose the most specific noun at your disposal.

Abuse of modifying phrases
“Having gotten out of her car and walked to the front door, Courtney stepped inside to find Roger on her couch.” The writer of a sentence like this wants you to know that Courtney got out of the car and walked to the front door, but, for whatever reason, the writer wants to squeeze in that bit about stepping inside and finding Roger — in the same sentence. Bad call. There’s a type of negligence in this approach, like “I didn’t want to figure out the best way to tell you about the trek from the car to the door, so I just crammed it in here.” Either make the trek its own sentence or maybe reassess whether you need to take the reader along on that car-to-door journey at all.

— June Casagrande is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.