{"id":3969,"date":"2023-09-18T01:21:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T06:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=3969"},"modified":"2023-08-20T05:37:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-20T10:37:22","slug":"nouns-and-verbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2023\/09\/nouns-and-verbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Nouns and Verbs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Back to a basic: write with nouns and verbs. It brings us closer to brevity and clarity. Those are pretty good places to be.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was reminded of this short and powerful writing tip this past week. And yes, it was from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk\/dp\/B0BYRNBRZ3\/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=strunk+and+white+elements+of+style&amp;qid=1692527011&amp;sprefix=strunk+and+%2Caps%2C82&amp;sr=8-1\">Strunk and White<\/a>. They used the title of the post in their essential handbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A couple of colleagues were debating about keeping or dropping an adverb. One felt that the verb by itself was too weak. The other felt brevity was better. Both were right; both were wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The better way is to find the right verb. There are plenty of verbs in the English language. For example, instead of &#8220;walk quickly&#8221; we could write &#8220;dash.&#8221; If we wanted a longer and more picturesque phrase, we could write, &#8220;he moved from his desk to the exit like a man seeking a hundred-dollar bill transiting a parking lot.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then again, sometimes we just want to put something on paper, check the &#8220;done&#8221; box, and move on. Oh wait, &#8220;move one&#8221; is worse than adding an adverb\u2014it is a verb-preposition in place of the right verb. Sigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We can do better. Let&#8217;s do better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips Back to a basic: write with nouns and verbs. It brings us closer to brevity and clarity. Those are pretty good places to be. I was reminded of this short and powerful writing tip this past week. And yes, it was from Strunk and White. They used the title of the post [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,310,412,320,66,5],"tags":[154,311,413,321,186,128],"class_list":["post-3969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-information","category-language","category-review","category-word","category-writing","tag-communication","tag-information","tag-language","tag-review","tag-word","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3970,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions\/3970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}