Whenever you are re-structuring sentences, keep in mind that you have plenty of readily-available, effective tools to employ. A particularly useful one consists of four parts — they are the rhetorical ...

Letters represent sounds. Words are built from letters. A group of words makes a phrase. Add a subject and verb, and you have a clause. If that clause expresses a complete thought, we call it a ...

Good news, kind of. I discovered a new sentence structure I hate. It’s a pattern I see often but only recently, while editing an article, realized it belongs in my writing hall of shame. Why would I ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. Years ago, a copy editor working on a reporter’s story changed some of the “whiches” to “thats” when they were being ...