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Speaking Plain Language: Not Talking Over Heads or Dumbing It Down
This past Christmas, I took a high-velocity wooden block to the shin, because nothing says “Merry Christmas” like extremely competitive yard games. My leg was still bruised and swollen a week later, so eventually I dragged myself to urgent care to make sure I hadn’t fractured it. After spending two hours in the waiting room,…
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Less is More (or Whinging about Academic Writing)
In middle school, I had a creative nonfiction writing assignment to write a story about an event from my life. It had to be at least a page. I wrote about the time my uncle’s dog escaped during a family vacation, and my cousins and I chased after him in a dramatic fence-hopping high-speed pursuit.…
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Understanding Passive vs. Active Voice (And Why BOTH Are Tools in Your Toolbox)
In college, I had a political science professor who had a total ban against passive voice. Any time you used passive voice, she docked a point from your assignment. Most assignments were worth 10 points, meaning you lost a whopping 10% of your grade for each passive sentence. While this tactic was successful in beating…
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