Chapter 9, Writing with Style

• Importance of Style


• Role of Style


• Plain Style


• Persuasive Style

Style reflects character by signifying the relationship you build with your readers.



It means choosing the right words and forming sentences that are easy to read, weaving your work together.



It illustrates your clear-headedness, your emphasis on quality, and your willingness to communicate and work with the readers.



Plain sentences -

1. subject is what the sentence is about


2. make the "doer" the subject


3. state the action in the verb


4. subject early in the sentence - anchors sentence


5. eliminate nominalizations - turn 1st draft nominalizations into action words


6. avoid excessive prepositional phrases - usually chained together in long sentences


7. eliminate redundancy


8. sentences "breathing length" - spoken in one breath

6 steps to plainer writing

1. identify who or what the sentence is about


2. turn that who/what into the subject and put it early in the sentence


3. identify what the subject is doing and move action to very


4. eliminate prepositional phrases - turn to adjectives


5. eliminate nominalizations and redundancies


6. shorten, lengthen, combine, or divide sentences to make the breathing length

Plain paragraphs -

• Transition Sentence - smooth bridge from one paragraph to another, "With these facts in mind let us consider..."
• Topic Sentence - 1st or 2nd sentence, sets a goal for the paragraph to reach
• Support Sentences - intended to help prove the claim made in the topic sentence
• Point Sentences - restate the topic sentence at the end of the paragraph

Aligning sentence subjects in a paragraph - related subjects

The given/new method to weave sentences together, begin with info the reader already knows and end with something new.

Passive voice - use when

• the reader doesn't need to know who or what is doing something
• subject of the sentence is what the sentence is about

Persuasive style -

• elevating the tone map out feelings associated with emotion and weave these words into the text at strategic moments, excitement (inspiring, motivating)(revolutionary, energy)
• Using similes "is like" and analogies "A is to B as X is to Y"
• Using Metaphors, familiar & new
• Changing the pace, longer sentences slow the pace, short speeds it up

Challenge is to match your proposal's style to the reader's needs and style