ter-control characters will not look right-justified on your screen. They will be right-justified, however, when you print them.
In the first sentence, the given information is lines (A), and the new information is right-justified (B). In the second sentence, the given information is right-justified (B), and the new information is when you print them (C).
Although the end of the sentence is generally the most emphatic position, as Strunk and White point out in The Elements of Style , "The other prominent position in the sentence is the beginning. Any element in the sentence other than the subject becomes emphatic when placed first: Deceit or treachery he could not forgive. "
A little bit of this inverted style, however, goes a long way-use it sparingly.
5. Express Statements in Positive Form
The positive form of a statement is generally more concise and straightforward than the negative:
no: Don't write in the negative.
yes: Write in the affirmative.
no: Disengagement of the gears is not possible without locking mechanism release.
yes: To disengage the gears, you must first release the locking mechanism.
As Joseph Williams points out, "To understand the negative, we have to translate it into an affirmative, because the negative only implies what we should do by telling us what we shouldn't do. The affirmative states it directly " (Style, 1 st ed.). p> Williams goes on to point out that we needn't translate every negative into an affirmative, for (as this sentence illustrates) we sometimes have a special reason to emphasize not, no, or never. The negative is especially effective when used as a means of denial, contradiction, or antithesis:
Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.
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6. Vary Sentence Patterns
A series of sentences that follow the same general pattern (eg, a series of three or four simple sentences or a series of three or four compound sentences) can be tedious. Avoid monotony by varying sentence patterns. p> One of the best ways to avoid a tedious series of simple sentences is to use subordination (Or embedding) to combine the information presented in these sentences into a single, complex sentence. For example,
FLIST is a utility program used to assist in file management. FLIST displays a scrollable, full-screen list of selected files. The user may execute any CMS command from this list.
becomes
FLIST, a utility program used to manage files, displays a scrollable, full-screen list of selected files from which the user may execute any CMS command.
Another way to avoid a series of simple sentences is to use coordination (the tying together of language elements that have equal rank, such as independent clauses) to combine several of these sentences into a single, compound sentence. For example,
You can initialize CADAM from any System E terminal. You can invoke CADAM only from the 3178 terminals.
becomes
You can initialize CADAM from any System E terminal, but you can invoke CADAM only from the 3178 terminals.
Compound and complex sentences can themselves, however, become tedious. And sometimes, they're just plain awkward or confusing. Don't overload your sentences or your readers. If you find a sentence is becoming too long and confusing, or if you've used three or four complex sentences in a row, reverse the process described above and break your sentence up into several shorter sentences.
Note that although sentence variety is illustrated here only in terms of sentence type, this same principle applies to other sentence features, such as sentence openings and sentence length.
One of the best ways to discover problems with sentence variety is to read your writing aloud. Human language is primarily oral/aural and only secondarily graphic/visual; hence, most of us have a better ear for language than we have an eye for it. In fact, reading your writing aloud can help you discover problems not only with sentence variety but also with order and emphasis, parallelism, coherence, redundancy, syntax, rhythm, and grammar.
7. Choose Your Words Carefully
Linguists estimate that the English language includes over one million words, thus providing English speakers with the largest lexicon in the world. From this vast lexicon, writers may choose the precise words to meet their needs. The list below describes some of the factors you might consider in choosing, from among a number of synonyms or near synonyms, the word or phrase most appropriate to your purpose. Notice that the distinctions between these factors are not always shar...
