Writers like to avoid the passive voice. And if you speak to many of them about it, you’re likely to get a pretty brutal condemnation in response. That’s because ‘avoid the passive voice’ is a pretty important and fundamental rule of decent quality copy. While that’s...
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The word ‘verb’ probably brings a slight tinge of discomfort to the average person – with memories of dry old grammar lessons from school. Of course, to us, the word brings up images of sunshine, rainbows and everything that’s good in the world – but...
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In his 1999 book On Writing Stephen King wrote: ‘The road to hell is paved with adverbs.’ In doing so, King continued a long tradition of writers disdaining adverbs. If you came here expecting to be told its all nonsense and you can use whatever...
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Perhaps one of the most infuriating things about the English language is the pervasive misconceptions that people have of it. Particularly, it must be said, from people who speak it. From ‘you shouldn’t start a sentence with and or but’, (start a sentence however you...
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