HOW TO EDIT A REALLY BAD BUSINESS MEMO

Poor business writing can leave employees with their eyes crossed.

     The following paragraph from a business memo cries out for improvement. How would you rewrite it? Think about such concerns as conciseness, subordination, verb choice, positive constructions, end focus, transitions, and the need for specifics. Also consider the tone of the document and the writer’s persona. If this were sent from the CEO of Giant Federal Bank to the company’s top executives, would the tone be appropriate? (By the way, although I have invented this memo, I have seen actual corporate writing that is this bad.)

It is incumbent upon all top-level Giant Federal executives not to underestimate low-level employees’ experience of understandable feelings of stress, which are not insignificant in these trying and difficult times. There is a need on the part of the Human Resources Department not to wait for problems to come to fruition in the workplace before undertaking more-than-minimal preemptive measures to prevent problems which are related to stress from emerging. The current distressing circumstances in the business world are not at all unusual, but instead a time when it is important for us all not to work separately on problems but as a team in fulfilling all our not inconsiderable responsibilities not only to our customers, but also those who are invested in our company, and of course not to mention the excellent people who work for us. The expectations that we provide our valued employees with great consideration demand much sensitivity on our part. It is with significant confidence in you all that the board of Giant Federal anticipates a successful new year that will not fail to exceed our expectations.

You might now try to spend a few minutes rewriting the paragraph yourself. I’ll wait. (Teachers: Have your students give it a try. They’ll usually do pretty well.)

THE PROBLEMS

You probably noticed most of the problems with the paragraph. Here are the most obvious:

1) Awkward negative constructions. Look especially at all the “nots”: “not to underestimate, “not insignificant,” “not to wait,” “not unusual,” “not to work separately,” “not inconsiderable.” Most negative constructions can and should be replaced by positive constructions.

Weak verbs can't carry a sentence.

 2) Weak verbs. Every sentence but one has some form of the verb “to be” (“is,” “are”) as its main verb. (The only exception is the verb “demand,” which is lost amid vague abstractions in the next-to-last sentence.) Sentences that begin “There are” or “It is” are often weakly constructed. Look for ways to make stronger verbs the engine of your sentences.

3) Wordiness. A long phrase like “it is incumbent upon” is just a long-winded way of saying “should.” “Trying and difficult” is redundant. “There is a need” is a wordy way of avoiding the simple verb “need.” “Not inconsiderable” is a phrase that really adds nothing to “responsibilities” and should probably be deleted. Several other adjectives also serve no real purpose. Always cut unnecessary words.

4) Weak end focus. Each of these sentences ends weakly, failing to emphasize its key point. Try to end each sentence with its main point or “nugget.”

5) Missing transitions. There is nothing here to connect one sentence with another. Usually, try, near the beginning of a sentence, to refer to something that was said previously in the paragraph (preferably in the previous sentence), then move the sentence on to its new idea. This is sometimes called the “known-to-new” approach to transitions. (Note: Obvious or unnecessary transitions can be heavy-handed, however, so try to make your transitions deft and subtle.)

6) Weak subordination and reduction. The main ideas of the sentences here are often lost in a fog of subordinate clauses, and minor ideas often get too much grammatical space or weight. Put main ideas in main clauses, lesser ideas in subordinate clauses or phrases. Some clauses or phrases can even be reduced to single words.

7) An utter lack of specifics. What kinds of “problems” does the memo mean? What kinds of solutions does it suggest? Always try to give specific examples to explain and support general statements or claims.

A mean or condescending tone undermines your writing.

 8) Inappropriate tone. Is it appropriate to call some employees “top-level” and other employees “low-level”? Is the Human Resources Department the only one responsible for employee morale? In the third sentence, is it appropriate to talk about employees almost as an afterthought, less important than customers and stockholders? Is the language here friendly, accessible, and encouraging? Is the syntax (sentence architecture) easy to follow and inviting? Is the “persona” (public impression) of the writer that of a friendly, encouraging CEO? Always consider how your readers will feel about the language and syntax you use, as well as the content of your message. In business writing, try to establish and maintain a “we’re all in this together” tone and, when possible, an encouraging, friendly persona.

     Here is one way I might rewrite this paragraph:

 

     In these difficult times, all of us at Giant Federal should recognize the stresses our employees are experiencing. All departments—with Human Resources leading the way—should anticipate stress-related problems in the workplace and take measures to prevent them. Employees worried about layoffs, for example, may try to undermine each others’ work or spread destructive rumors about their colleagues in order to increase their own chances of being retained. Each department, working with the advice of Human Resources, may wish to head off such problems by arranging a series of workshops and other events devoted to building a sense of teamwork, loyalty, and optimism among employees. To this end, the company will support weekly informal outings for employees—for example, to see a local baseball game or to have a Friday afternoon company-wide barbeque. Indeed, such stressful times call for all of us to work as a team in order to meet our responsibilities not just to our employees, but to our customers and stockholders. With that in mind, please monitor our employees’ feelings closely and sensitively. If we all do that, we can anticipate a successful new year.

     You can compare the original paragraph with the revised paragraph yourself to see the now-positive constructions, strengthened verbs, clearer subordination/reduction, and improved conciseness.

     I do wish to point out some of the transitional phrases, however, because I've not discussed transitions in previous posts. Here are some of the transitions in the revised paragraph: “for example,” “such problems,” “to this end,” “such stressful times,” “if we all do that”—all of these phrases refer to something earlier in the paragraph, helping to clarify the connections between sentences.

     Also note the addition of specific examples of stress-related employee behavior (undermining each others’ work, spreading rumors) and of possible preventive measures (workshops, ball games, barbeques).

     Finally, note the improved tone—especially the shift from “you should do this” to “we should all work on this.”

     We should all try to write business documents more carefully.

Well-written documents will make your employees happier.

    

A BEAUTIFUL PARAGRAPH? YES, A BEAUTIFUL PARAGRAPH.

Like Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Crows," great writing can move me to tears.

     There are several kinds of tears, of course: tears of grief, tears of pain, tears of happiness. My favorite tears are “tears of beauty”—the tears that come when something beautiful squeezes your soul so hard that it overflows through your eyes. Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor (Dinu Lipatti version) does it for me. Van Gogh’s painting “Wheatfield with Crows” does it, too, and so does the movie Babette’s Feast.

     Like most serious writers and readers, I can in five minutes name fifty pieces of writing—poems, novels, short stories, even essays—that cause me to weep for their beauty. To name a quick few: Yeats’s poem “A Prayer for My Daughter,” Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Babylon Revisited,” George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant.”

     Even a single paragraph can evoke my tears, and this post is about one of those.

     E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake” is the most satisfying essay I’ve ever read. It describes White’s visit to the lake where his family vacationed when he was a boy. Now a father himself, White returns to the lake with his own son, where he discovers that, in a way, nothing has changed since he was there as a boy with his own father, a lifetime before. As the essay proceeds, time melts away. Then, in the end, White realizes that some things must change. The essay, which deals with profound and moving subjects (death, memory, identity, the cycles of life), offers beautiful paragraph after beautiful paragraph. The final two paragraphs will sear themselves forever into your memory. The following paragraph, in which White describes taking his son fishing, early in the essay, is one that moves me to tears, not so much for its sentiment as for the beauty of its writing:

We went fishing the first morning. I felt the same damp moss covering the worms in the bait can, and saw the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a few inches from the surface of the water. It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years. The small waves were the same, chucking the rowboat under the chin as we fished at anchor, and the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places, and under the floor-boards the same fresh-water leavings and debris—the dead helgramite, the wisps of moss, the rusty discarded fishhook, the dried blood from yesterday’s catch. We stared silently at the tips of our rods, at the dragonflies that came and went. I lowered the tip of mine into the water, tentatively, pensively dislodging the fly, which darted two feet away, poised, darted two feet back, and came to rest again a little farther up the rod. There had been no years between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one—the one that was part of memory. I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn’t know which rod I was at the end of.

     I should end this post now and let you run off to read the whole essay, which you can find here.

A single specific dragonfly on the tip of a fishing pole.

     But because this blog is about writing well, I feel obliged to discuss, just briefly, what makes this writing so good. Here are some of the things you might notice:

1) The paragraph teems with perfectly observed concrete images: moss, the bait can, the dragonflies, the green rowboat with its broken ribs, the moss, the rusty fishhook, the dried blood, the fishing rods. The only important abstraction is the magic word “memory.” Great writing rests on concrete images—things to see, taste, touch, smell, and hear.

2) The paragraph is full of specifics. Generalities like “leavings and debris” are immediately followed by their specifics: the moss, the fishhook, and so on. The many dragonflies even resolve to one single, specific dragonfly. Great writing is full of specifics.

3) The language of the paragraph is plain, not fancy. (The only word you might not know is “helgramite”—spelled “hellgrammite” in my dictionary—which is a kind of larva used by fishermen as bait. I didn’t mind looking the word up; a fisherman probably needn’t. It is, in fact, a nice specific word.) 

"Hellgrammite" is used as bait. It's a wonderfully specific word, even if I didn't know what it meant.

Most of the words in the paragraph are crisp, and of seemingly Anglo-Saxon origin: “dragonfly,” “moss,” “worms,” “chucking,” “rowboat,” “blood,” “boy,” and so on. (Actually, “dragon” does have Latin roots, and “worm” may, but they don’t feel Latinate.) There are very few words of obviously Latin or Greek origin. Such words are often “softer” and stretchier and more languorous: “silently,” “tentatively,” and “pensively” are Latinate, and they quiet the writing, slow it down just when White wants to. Latinate words often call for the reader to pause a bit, and think more abstractly. “Memory” is one of those words here. Anglo-Saxon words are often more direct and act more instantaneously on the reader’s senses. The difference between Latinate words and Anglo-Saxon words is the difference between “memory” and “moss.” (More on the difference between Latin/Greek words and Anglo-Saxon words in a future post.) Great writing doesn’t require a souped-up vocabulary, and Anglo-Saxon words tend to reach a reader’s nerve-endings faster than Latin- or Greek-based words.

4) The sentences vary perfectly in length and rhythm, in keeping with the sentiment. The paragraph begins with a short, grammatically simple sentence, just as the event—going fishing with his son—seems, at first, a simple, uncomplicated act. The second sentence is longer, as the author begins to observe the ordinary details of the boat, and things, including his thinking, begin to slow down. The third sentence is longer still, very long, slow as the summer’s day, piling up ever more dreamy, nostalgic details, as White’s writing starts to reflect the slowing down and then the overlapping of time, and his deliberative examination of, and ruminations on, the scene. The next sentences, of modest length, replace the many dragonflies with the modest little story of the single dragonfly White dunks, as he finds himself losing himself in memory. The final sentence is again short and simple, so it doesn’t dilute the stunning impact of the writer’s “dizziness” and displaced identity. (The final sentence also is a good example of why you sometimes have to end a sentence with a preposition. How would you write that sentence otherwise?) In good writing, sentence length and sentence rhythm match the subject, as here.

5) The word choice, especially of verbs, is perfectly precise: “alight,” “hovering,” “chucking,” “darting,” “dislodged,” “poised,” “ducking.” I especially love “poised"—exactly right to describe a dragonfly stopped in midair.  Precise words snap good writing into focus, and (to mix my metaphors) strong verbs give it its pulse.

6) The few figures of speech are fresh, vivid, accurate, and unselfconscious. The first two are lovely and lucid: The years gone by were a “mirage.” The waves are “chucking the rowboat under the chin.” Finally, there’s the metaphor (if that’s what to call it) to which all of this has been leading: “It was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching.” He has become his own son. (Elsewhere in the essay, he realizes that he has also assumed the role of his own father.) Great figures of speech aren’t designed to show off the writer but to illuminate ideas. These do that beautifully.

Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" famously sums up the connection of truth to beauty.

7) The paragraph is absolutely sincere, absolutely honest. We trust this writer—because of his modesty, because of his powers of observation, because of the unpretentious language, because we don’t feel manipulated—rather, we feel enlightened, privileged to share his experience. There is truth being told here. Cue Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” (See here.)  Yup. Only writing that is true, by a writer whom we trust, can be really beautiful.

     I could talk about some of the other wonders in this paragraph: the pitch-perfect tone, the use of parallel structure, repetition of words (see how he uses "same"), syntactic variation—heck, the adverbs alone deserve special praise. But I’ll stop here. I don’t want to worry this wonderful piece of writing to tatters.

     If you are a writer or a serious reader, you have your own favorite pieces of writing, those that bring you to tears. It can be illuminating to analyze them carefully, to understand how they perform their magic. I promise such analysis will only enhance your love of them.

     The word “beautiful” should never be used carelessly. I use it carefully in this post. E.B. White’s  paragraph earns my tears.

E.B. White, a modest, magnificent writer

DON’T TIE YOURSELF IN NOTS

Don't tie yourself—or your prose—in "nots."

     E.B. White’s magnificent little book The Elements of Style has many pieces of advice that instantly improved my writing when I was young. One of his best suggestions is only five words long: “Put statements in positive form.”

     As usual, a few examples will make the principle clear:

Negative form: “He does not usually arrive on time.”

Positive form: “He often arrives late.”

Negative form: “Don’t forget to put statements in positive form.”

Positive form: “Remember to put statements in positive form.”

(Or, more assertively, “Put statements in positive form.”)

Negative form: “It’s not unlikely that the clown will frighten the kids.”

Positive form: “The clown may frighten the kids.”

Negative form: “I don’t think the ring will meet her expectations.”

Positive form: “I think the ring will disappoint her.”

     You’ll notice that all the negative-form examples contain the word “not.” The positive forms, without the word “not,” are better: more concise, quicker to be understood.

     There’s nothing wrong with the word “not,” however. As White himself points out, it is especially effective in a phrase that is followed by a contrasting positive phrase:

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

“I am not your friend; I am your mother.”

“That’s not a Rolex; it’s a knockoff.”

      And often you need to use “not” to warn someone away from an action or to defend someone against an accusation:

“Don’t hit me!”

“Don’t bite your nails.”

“I am not a crook.”

“We are not crazy yet.”

You may have noticed that even the title of this blog post uses “not.”

      But , as often as not, a “not” can be avoided, as in the earlier examples. (Is “usually” better than “as often as not”? Maybe. Maybe not.) Do not be afraid of “not,” but when you use it, ask if the idea can be better expressed in positive form.

"Yes, we have no bananas"—a clever way to turn a negative into a positive.

      “Never,” “nothing,” “no,” and “no one” are other negatives you should question, as here:

Negative form: “She never failed to kiss him when he made her breakfast.”

Positive form: “She always kissed him when he made her breakfast.”

Negative form: “There’s nothing wrong with the word ‘not.’” (Oops! I just wrote that sentence up above.)

Positive form: “The word ‘not’ is perfectly all right.”

Negative form: “I have no bananas left.”

Positive form: “I’ve sold out of bananas.”

Negative form: “No one missed the opening pitch of the game.”

Positive form: “Everyone saw the opening pitch of the game.”    

     When you see an “un,” “in,” or “dis” word—which is often a negative in disguise—also ask yourself if the statement can better be put in positive form:

Negative form: “He was rarely unsuccessful at the foul line.”

Positive form: “He usually succeeded at the foul line.”

Negative form: “The doctor was not usually incompetent.”

Positive form: “The doctor was usually competent.”

Negative form: “I was not dishonest in my dealings with you.”

Positive form: “I treated you honestly.”

      Sharp readers will have noticed that in many cases, we are merely turning disguised double negatives into positives: “rarely,” “incompetent,” and “dishonest” imply negation; when preceded by a “not” or other negative word, they create a de facto double negative. That’s why it’s easy to turn most of the sentences in our examples into positive form.

     Sometimes a double negative is really well disguised:

Negative form: “The building has not been torn down.”

Positive form: “The building is still standing.”

“Torn down” is actually negative in effect, so again we have a double negative.

"I was not uninvolved in the action that left the tree fallen."

      Like passive-voice verbs, negative constructions are often the coward’s way to avoid being direct and taking responsibility. In the following examples, the writer appears to be trying not to say what he really means:

“We were not unaware of the situation.”

(Real meaning: “We knew all about it and still did nothing to fix it.”)

“The budget cuts were not without consequences.”

(Real meaning: “Cutting the budget meant laying off fifty employees.”)

“I was not uninvolved in the action that left the tree fallen.”

(Real meaning: “Yes, I cut down the cherry tree.”)

     Let me repeat: Negatives like “not” are perfectly good words. Often, however, you will improve your writing by eliminating them.  

Litotes: "Rafael Nadal is no slug on the tennis court."

     Having said all that, I want to point out that great writers have often used a figure of speech that employs negatives to wonderful effect. It’s called “litotes.” Here are some examples:

“Rafael Nadal is no slug on the tennis court.”

“Einstein was no slouch with just a pencil and paper.”

“The film Titanic was no small success.”

 “Angelina Jolie is not unattractive.”

“The priest was no saint.”

“She’s not my favorite person.”

     Litotes—stating a positive by attaching a negative to its opposite—can be a lovely, subtle form of understatement. The Old English poets especially liked it. Here is a nice variation on a line from Beowulf: “The sword was not ineffective in ending the quarrel.”

     I shall end with an example of bad writing from another of my favorite sources of writing advice: George Orwell’s instructive and important essay “Politics and the English Language.” Orwell offers the following passage by a famous 20^th Century intellectual, now dead and best left unnamed:

“I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.”

     Huh? Let me repeat: That is abysmal writing, for many reasons, the piling on of negatives being just one. Don’t do that.

     Or, to put it positively: Do better.

"The sword was not ineffective in ending the quarrel."

THE END OF THE SENTENCE: How to stick your landings

A sentence is like a walk to a waterfall.

     Think of a sentence as a small journey for your readers, like a walk to a waterfall or a bike ride to the ice cream shop. The payoff normally comes, not during the journey itself (though the journey should be pleasant), but at the end.

     None of the following sentences is wrong, exactly, but each has a similar weakness.

“An elephant burial ground is something that everyone should visit at some point in her life.”

“My fiancée’s drinking problem is a matter that is causing me great concern.”

“Given the state of the economy, that our company lost $2.5 million last year should result in significant changes to the way we do business in the future.”

“The short attention spans of U.S. teenagers will become a difficulty in today’s ever more competitive global society.”

“The need to find new sources of energy besides oil in the coming decades is becoming abundantly clear.”

“He finished at the top of his class even though he worked two jobs and played football.”

“He was forced to declare bankruptcy because of all the medical bills he had run up.”

“Wind turbines are one of the most interesting features of the new apartment complex.”

“If we don’t study for the test, passing the course will be problematic.”

      The common problem here? That’s right: Each sentence ends, not with a satisfying snap, but with a dying gasp. Instead of gradually leading readers to the main point and then sending them off satisfied with a fresh, shining idea, each sentence trails off into vague or vacant phrases, the main point left somewhere behind. In the first sentence, for example, elephant burial grounds are interesting, but “is something that everyone should visit at some point in her life” is wordy and flat; it’s a phrase that could follow almost any subject (the Taj Mahal, Mammoth Cave, the far side of insanity). Likewise the second sentence: “My fiancée’s drinking problem” certainly grabs one’s attention, but “is a matter that is causing me great concern” is trite and bland and could, again, follow almost any subject (acne, global warming, the death of god).

     In writer’s terms, each of the sample sentences lacks “end focus.” In several cases, it could be said that the sentence has a “weak predicate.” (Reminder: the predicate is the verb part of a sentence, including the modifiers and objects that go with the verb.)

     Forgive me for mixing my metaphors (so far I’ve tried snaps, gasps, “shining” things, “vacant” things, hikes, and ice cream). Here's a new metaphor to give you my version of the principle at work here:

     Look for the gold nugget in your sentence. More often than not, try to put that nugget at the end.

     (Notice I didn’t write, “Putting that nugget at the end is what you should try to do, more often than not.” Dying gasp.)

Generally, put the nugget of your sentence at the end.

     Let’s rewrite each of the weak sentences from the beginning of this post to give them end focus. (Teachers: Have your students try it first.)

Weak finish: “An elephant burial ground is something that everyone should visit at some point in her life.”

Strong finish: “At least once, everyone should visit an elephant burial ground.”

Weak finish: “My fiancée’s drinking problem is a matter that is causing me great concern.”

Strong finish: “I worry about my fiancée’s drinking problem.”

Weak finish: “Given the state of the economy, that our company lost $2.5 million last year should result in significant changes to the way we do business in the future.”

Strong finish: “In this economy, because our company lost $2.5 million last year, we must change the way we do business.”

OR
Strong finish: “In this economy, if we don’t change the way we do business, we may lose $2.5 million again this year.”

[Note: Which fix you use depends on what you want to emphasize: the need to change business practices or the fact that the company lost money.]

Weak finish: “The short attention spans of U.S. teenagers will become a difficulty in today’s ever more competitive global society.”

Strong finish: “In a global economy, U.S. teenagers will be handicapped by their short attention spans.”

Weak finish: “The need to find new sources of energy besides oil in the coming decades is becoming abundantly clear.”

Strong finish: “In the coming decades, we must find new sources of energy besides oil.”

Weak finish: “He finished at the top of his class even though he worked two jobs and played football.”

Strong finish: “Even though he worked two jobs and played football, he finished at the top of his class.”

Weak finish: “He was forced to declare bankruptcy because of all the medical bills he had run up.”

Strong finish: “His medical bills forced him to declare bankruptcy.”

Weak finish: “Wind turbines are one of the most interesting features of the new apartment complex.”

Strong finish: “Interestingly, the new apartment complex features wind turbines.”

Weak finish: “If we don’t study for the test, passing the course will be problematic.”

Strong finish: “If we want to pass the course, we must study for the test.”

OR

Strong finish: “If we don’t study for the test, we will fail the course.”

[Again, how you finish the sentence depends on what you wish to emphasize.]

      Did you notice that, in the improved sentences, I cheated a bit? For one thing, in addition to moving the main idea to the end, I often changed the verb. As I’ve said in other blog posts, the most important part of any sentence is the verb. Weak verbs lead to weak sentences. Most of the bad sample sentences had weak main verbs, such as “is,” “should result,” “will become,” “are,” “will be.” Notice that none of these verbs describes any action. To fix the sentences, it helped to give the verbs some muscle. Look at the new verbs: “should visit,” “worry,” “must change,” “may lose,” “will be handicapped” [a rare case when a passive-voice verb works well], “must find,” “forced,” “features,” “must study,” “will fail.” Each sentence now ends, not just with the nugget of the idea, but with a strong verb phrase.

      For another thing, I also made the sentences more concise, less trite, less “fancy” in their language and more “plain.” This helped make the nugget of each sentence shine a bit more clearly at the end.

The periodic sentence ends satisfyingly, like a good jump shot.

     Writers sometimes try an extreme version of the end-focused sentence. It’s called the “periodic sentence.” The periodic sentence builds and builds, slowly, slowly, and then, bam!, just before the period, it hits you with the main point, often a surprise. Here are two examples:

 “Although she had perfect skin, pleasant curves, and shimmering hair, although she was well read and could converse intelligently on any subject, although she was good with animals and loved children, he found her perfectly repulsive.”

“In the midst of rain showers, during snow flurries and wind storms, before sunrise and after sunset, following break-ups and funerals, he could be found in the park, practicing his jump shot.”

      In fact, to add a gymnastics metaphor, there’s an even more extreme way to land the end of the sentence. I call it "the suspenseful colon.” Here are two examples:

“There is one thing that everyone should visit before they die: an elephant burial ground.”

“I’m worried about something: my fiancée’s drinking problem.”

      You get the idea.

      Both the periodic sentence and the “suspenseful colon” should be used sparingly. Overused,  they become a mannerism—a kind of writerly tic. They can distract the reader from your content and draw attention to you, the writer—rarely a good idea. Ah, and the “suspenseful dash,” as used in the previous two sentences, can also help you strongly emphasize an idea. Likewise, the sentence fragment.

       Used well, such devices can be satisfying ways to bring the journey of a sentence to an end: ice cream and waterfalls for all.

A sentence should stick the landing.

________________

Other writers on the end of sentences:

“Formulas for ending sentences are like other verbal formulas. All formulas should be avoided, but some more than others. The filler predicate is certain to destroy any possibility of a satisfactory coda, an ending that satisfies us by its rhythm and resolution.” —Donald Hall, Writing Well

“Sentences generally should not dwindle into modifying phrases or weak predicates, such as those that merely declare that something ‘is important.’ Instead, the predicate should add new information that the next sentence will comment on.”—Carolyn Rude, Technical Editing

“The principle that the proper place for what is to be made most prominent is the end applies equally to the words of a sentence, to the sentences of a paragraph, and to the paragraphs of a composition.”—E.B. White, The Elements of Style