MAKING YOUR WRITING FLOW, PART I: KEY POINTS What is flow? Flow refers to a combination of things.

Logic Organization Sentence-level composition: grammar and style Grammar and Style Grammar is about rules. Style is about choices. Principles for making good choices 1. ELIMINATE WORDINESS. Remove any words that arent adding to the meaning of your sentence. Examples Wordy: The dogs who were barking outside in the alley next to my house kept me up and awake all night long. Concise: The barking dogs in the alley kept me up all night. Wordy: My sister is a nice, kind person who cannot understand or comprehend how other people in our town can be so mean and cruel to people. Concise: My sister is a nice person who cannot understand how others can be so mean. Wordy: The struggle for liberty and freedom is a struggle that has gone on for a very long time indeed. Concise: The struggle for liberty has gone on for a long time. 2. BE CONCRETE. To express actions and conditions, use specific verbs, adverbs, or adjectives rather than abstract nouns. The term action here includes physical actions (such as walking, raining, or discussing) as well as nonphysical ones (such as believing, caring, or analyzing). The term condition refers to a state of being, such as The sun is larger than the moon or Tom is angry. And abstract nouns are verbs that have been turned into nouns, as when we turn the verb to invest into the noun investment, or the verb to see into the noun sight. Examples Abstract: We had a discussion of the matter. Concrete: We discussed the matter. Abstract: A review was done of the relevant regulations. Concrete: The team reviewed the relevant regulations. Abstract: The intention of the committee is the improvement of the company morale. Concrete: The committee intends to improve company morale.

3. MATCH SUBJECTS AND AGENTS. When it is appropriate, make the subject of your verb the agent of the action the verb describes. A verb is a word that describes an action or condition (such as walking, raining, believing, is [x], is [y].) The subject of a sentence is the word or phrase in the sentence that names who or what is doing/being that the verb describes (e.g., Ellen walked, It rained, Martin is funny.) The agent of a sentence is the actual who or what performing the action. An example of a sentence in which the subject and agent are matched is In 1956, Elvis Presley recorded the song Blue Suede Shoes, since the subject of the sentence (the phrase Elvis Presley) names the actual person who performed the action of recording. An example of sentence in which subject and agent are mismatched is Blue Suede Shoes was recorded by Elvis. Although the person who recorded the song is, of course, Elvis, the subject of the sentence is not: the subject of this sentence is Blue Suede Shoes. Thus agent (Elvis) and subject Blue Suede Shoes) are mismatched.