Using Contractions
Active versus passive voice
Use a plural subject
Read aloud to proofread
Badly vs. Bad

Don’t write that someone “feels badly.”

Why not?

“Badly” is an adverb. If you write “Cheryl feels badly,” “badly” indicates that Cheryl is not good at feeling, which must mean there’s something wrong with her fingers.

“Bad” is an adjective. In this sentence, “Cheryl feels bad,” “bad” describes the noun “Cheryl” and means that she feels ill or sad.

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When proofreading and editing your own work, try reading it aloud to yourself.

Why?

It’s easier to skim with your eyes than it is with your mouth, especially if you are very familiar with a piece of writing, as you are likely to be if you’ve been working on it for a long time or if it’s already gone through several revisions. When you read aloud, you’re forced to slow down, and you may therefore be more apt to find missing, incorrect, or awkward words or phrases.

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Avoid using contractions in professional writing.

Why?

We all use contractions in everyday speech and casual writing.  However, in professional written communication, their use is best avoided.

Expanding contractions in written communication gives a more formal, professional appearance to the work, as well as making it clearer and more emphatic.  Another important benefit is that following this practice often helps the writer avoid errors such as using “you’re” when “your” is the correct word. 

Contractions can also be ambiguous.  Consider that it’s may be a contraction for it has as well as it is; it’d may mean either it would or it had.  For academic and business writers, who should be mindful of their global audience, this is particularly important.  Will readers in Germany or India, to whom English is a second language, be forced to re-read your sentences or guess at their meanings?

Why not just write the words that you mean?  All your readers will thank you!

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Active voice is better than passive voice in most cases.

Why?

Sentences written in active voice are shorter and easier to understand, and they emphasize the subject. Consider this example:

My daughter won the race. (active – The subject, daughter, does the action.)
The race was won by my daughter. (passive – The subject, daughter, has the action done to her.)

Passive-voice sentences are preferable, however, when the subject is obvious, irrelevant, or unknown or when you want to emphasize the receiver of the action.

A house in the 800 block of Main Street was broken into last night.
The Olympic flame was extinguished after 17 days of competition.

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When speaking generally, it is often advantageous to use a plural subject.

Why?

A common error is illustrated as follows:

A driver needs to always wear their seatbelt.
A driver needs to always wear his seatbelt.

The first sentence contains an error.  The pronoun “their” is plural, but it refers to a singular noun, “driver.”  The second example, while technically correct, implies that the “driver” will always be male; often this is untrue and so should be avoided.

Using “his/her” is much better.  Unfortunately, in a long sentence with multiple pronouns, “his/her”, “his/hers”, “he/she”, “him/her, etc., can become very awkward. 

This problem can be more easily correct by simply making the subject plural:

Drivers need to wear their seatbelts.

This is not always possible, but when it is, it makes the sentence more clear and compact.