that-clause, stick with that-clauses; if you start with an infinitive,
stick with infinitives; if you start with a participle, stick with
participles; and so on. What you don’t want is a mixed bag, as in She had a
strong desire to pursue medicine and for studying literature or The
scientist asked for volunteers with allergies but who had not given blood
recently.
A second point is to make sure that once you have chosen the kind of
grammatical forms you want to make parallel, you structure them
symmetrically. Remember that an initial article, preposition, auxiliary
verb, or modifier will tend to govern all elements in the series unless it
is repeated for each element. For example, if you set up a series of nouns
with the first modified by an adjective, the reader will expect the
adjective to modify the rest of the series as well. Thus you should say The
building has new lighting, plumbing, and carpeting but not The building has
new lighting, plumbing, and different carpeting. The same is true for
articles: He brought the rod, reel, and bait. If you want to restrict a
modifier to only one noun, repeat the article for each noun: He brought the
light rod, the reel, and the bait.
When you spot a faulty parallel, recast the structure to give all
the elements equivalent treatment. If your new parallel construction does
not seem much of an improvement, rewrite the sentence completely to avoid
the parallel construction. Better to have no parallel structures than to
have parallel structures that sound overblown or stilted.
Faulty parallelism is all around us. We see and hear it every
day—often without taking notice. How many times have you heard Please leave
your name, number, and a brief message? After waiting for the tone, have
you ever objected to the imperfect symmetry of this sentence? In our most
recent ballot we presented some sentences with questionable parallelism to
the usage panelists to see how tolerant they would be. As we expected, they
had a range of opinions.
Crafting sentences with flawless parallelism takes effort and
practice. Even if your readers don’t notice or object when you make
mistakes, balance and symmetry are worth striving for in your writing.
There are certain constructions that are notorious for throwing things out
of whack. I listed some of them below.
both … and …
comparisons with as and than
compound verbs
either … or / neither … nor
not only … but also
rather than
Passive Voice
Writing handbooks usually include warnings about the passive voice—it
is wordy and clumsy and leads to static rather than dynamic writing. There
is truth to this, certainly, but the passive voice also has legitimate
uses, and in many instances it is preferable to the active voice.
Such phrases as "The material will be delivered"; "The start date is
to be decided"; "The figures must be approved" are obscure ones leaving
unsettled who it is that delivers, who decides, and who does the
approving. Which side it is to be? Lawsuits are the plausible outcome
of leaving it all unsettled. Passives used in contracts can destroy the
whole negotiations. "You will deliver" is better for it identifies the
one who will do delivering. Certainly, "must be approved by us" violates
other canons. "We shall have the right but not the obligation to approve"
is less unfortunate.
There is no doubt that passives do not suit business letters, and
if they go all the way through without adding something like "by you" or
"by us" they are intolerable. Once in a long while one may find passives
used purposely to leave something unresolved.
Redundancy
A certain amount of redundancy is built in to the English language,
and we would never consider getting rid of it. Take grammatical number, for
instance. Sentences such as 'He drives to work' and 'We are happy' contain
redundant verb forms. The -s of drives indicates singularity of the
subject, but we already know the subject is singular from the singular
pronoun he. Similarly, are indicates a plural subject, which is already
evident from the plural pronoun we. Number is also indicated redundantly in
phrases like this book and those boxes, where the demonstrative adjective
shows number and the noun does as well.
But there are redundant ways of saying things that can make the rest
of your writing seem foolish. Many of these are common expressions that go
unnoticed in casual conversation but that stick out like red flags in
writing. Why say at this point in time instead of now, or because of the
fact that when because will do? Something that is large in size is really
just large. The trouble lies less in the expressions themselves than in
their accumulated effect. Anyone can be forgiven for an occasional
redundancy, but writing that is larded with redundancies is likely to draw
unwanted laughs rather than admiration.
Listed below are some of the more problematic redundancies.
but … however
close proximity
consensus
consider as / deem as
cross section
else
empty rhetoric
equally as
free gift
from whence
inside of
mental telepathy
old adage
rarely ever / seldom ever
reason is because
reason why
refer back
revert back
VAT tax
Wordiness
In a world in which efficiency has become a prime value, most people
view economy in wording as a sign of intelligence. Its opposite, therefore,
is often considered a sign of stupidity. Most of us are busy and impatient
people. We hate to wait. Using too many words is like asking people to
stand in line until you get around to the point. It is irritating, which
hardly helps when you are trying to win someone’s goodwill or show that you
know what you’re talking about. What is worse, using too many words often
makes it difficult to understand what is being said. It forces a reader to
work hard to figure out what is going on, and in many cases the reader may
simply decide it is not worth the effort. Another side effect of verbosity
is the tendency to sound overblown, pompous, and evasive. What better way
to turn off a reader?
It is easy to recommend concision in expression but much harder to
figure out how to achieve it. In general, wordy writing has three
distinguishing characteristics: weak verbs, ponderous nouns, and lots of
prepositional phrases. The three are interconnected.
The key to writing clearly and concisely is to use strong active
verbs. This means that you should only use the passive voice when you have
a solid reason for doing so. If you look down a page you have written and
see that you are relying on forms of the verb be and other weak verbs like
seem and appear, you can often boil down what you have written to a
fraction of its size by revising with active verbs.
Here is an example:
It is essential to acknowledge that one of the drawbacks to the increased
utilization of part-time employees is that people who are still engaged
full-time by the company are less likely to be committed to the recognition
and identification of problems in the production area.
This passage has 45 words. We can boil it down to 14 by cutting out the
unnecessary words, using active verbs, and using noun modifiers to do the
work of prepositional phrases:
Using more part-time employees often makes full-time employees less
willing to report production problems.
A certain amount of repetition and redundancy has its uses. It
never hurts to thank someone and add that you appreciate what was done. The
recapitulation of the major points in a complicated essay can be a generous
service to the reader, not a needless repetition. If you keep focused on
what you are trying to accomplish and on what will help your readers or
your listeners, you will have less need to remember formal rules of good
writing. You will be able to trust your instincts and your ear.
5. Lexics of business letters
From the lexicological point of view isolated words and phrases mean
very little. In context they mean a great deal, and in the special
context of contractual undertakings they mean everything. Contract
English is a prose organised according to plan.
And it includes, without limitation, the right but not the
obligation to select words from a wide variety of verbal implements and
write clearly, accurately, and/or with style.
Two phases of writing contracts exist: in the first, we react to
proposed contracts drafted by somebody else, and in the second, which
presents greater challenge, we compose our own.
A good contract reads like a classic story. It narrates, in orderly
sequence, that one part should do this and another should do that, and
perhaps if certain events occur, the outcome will be changed. All of
the rate cards charts, and other reference material ought to be ticked off
one after another according to the sense of it. Tables and figures, code
words and mystical references are almost insulting unless organised and
defined. Without organisation they baffle, without definition they
entrap.
In strong stance one can send back the offending document and request
