By Charles Halton on Wednesday, 6 June 2007 at 8:07 am

Here is another selection from Contanance Hale’s Sin and Syntax. In this quote she takes aim at a common problem in academic writing–cumbersome prepositional phrases. Enjoy and keep honing your writing skills this summer:

The most frequent prepositional sin is to replace one good, terse word with a stack of prepositional phrases. The worst prepositional train wrecks crop up in legal writing, with its herinbelows, with respect theretos, and therins. But lawyers are hardly the only offenders. Have you ever counted the number of ways windy writers and speakers avoid the direct adverb now:

as of now

at present

at this point in time

at this time

for the time being

in this day and age

in the not-too-distant future

Of course, none of these beats Alexander Haig’s all-time worst way not to say now: “at this juncture of maturization.”

Anytime you can replace a cluster of words with one elegant one, do it.¹

1. Constance Hale, Sin and Syntax (New York: Broadway Books, 1999): 104. [back]

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Category: All,Engaging Academic Writing

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