Here are 3 tips to strengthen your sentences and make your writing stronger.
Tip 1:
Your writing will be more effective if you use strong verbs and nouns instead of trying to prop up weak ones with adjectives and adverbs.
Weak: The dentist intentionally spoke untruthfully about the diagnosis.
Strong: The dentist lied about the diagnosis.
Weak: The insurance agency maliciously took advantage of persons with limited income and limited education.
Strong: The insurance agency deceived the poor and the ignorant.
Tip 2:
Carefully choose strong adjectives and adverbs, and avoid adding intensifiers.
violent (not: rather violent)
starved (not: somewhat starved)
histrionic (not: slightly histrionic)
Tip 3:
Do not try to prop up weak adjectives and adverbs with a string of intensifiers.
She was infuriated. (Not: She was very, very, very mad.)
The pain was excruciating. (Not: The pain was really, really bad.)
All three tips above involve making careful word choices. Use a dictionary and a thesaurus if necessary to find the precise words needed to make your point.
For many more tips and helpful information, be sure to visit my web site and learn more about my book, Simple Steps to Sentence Sense, which includes 8 simple steps to help you become a better writer.
All the best,
You might also like Charlene’s post about how to lock out hackers.
And, her post about the use of inflated language.