you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.

What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump.

Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed

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 (sic) to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

Fortunately, it does not matter where we start, since attending to any one structural problem eventually leads us to all the others.

fault

"Bees disperse pollen" and "Pollen is dispersed by bees" are two different but equally respectable sentences about the same facts. The first tells us something about bees; the second tells us something about pollen. The passivity of the second sentence does not by itself impair its quality; in fact, "Pollen is dispersed by bees" is the superior sentence if it appears in a paragraph that intends to tell us a continuing story about pollen. Pollen's story at that moment is a passive one.

but not one that necessarily reflects the author's intentions

We cannot succeed in making even a single sentence mean one and only one thing; we can only increase the odds that a large majority of readers will tend to interpret our discourse according to our intentions.

Only the author could tell us which of these revisions more accurately reflects his intentions.

As a result, the reader focuses attention on the arrival of the verb and resists recognizing anything in the interrupting material as being of primary importance.

The smallest of the URF's, and [A], has been identified as a [B] subunit 8 gene. The functional significance of the other URF's has been, on the contrary, elusive. Recently, however, [C] experiments, as well as [D] studies, have indicated that six human URF's [1-6] encode subunits of Complex I. This is a large complex that also contains many subunits synthesized in the cytoplasm.

We have striven not for simplification but for clarification.

These needs and expectations of readers affect the interpretation not only of tables and illustrations but also of prose itself. Readers have relatively fixed expectations about where in the structure of prose they will encounter particular items of its substance. If writers can become consciously aware of these locations, they can better control the degrees of recognition and emphasis a reader will give to the various pieces of information being presented.

it matters only whether a large majority of the reading audience accurately perceives what the author had in mind.

Improving the quality of writing actually improves the quality of thought.

And I thought, "Wow. I get it. I really get it."

6. Distraction. Wh

I don't think all of these are words.

I wasn't going to read another paper without understanding it

"What question were the authors trying to answer?" Then you can determine whether they succeeded or failed.

Most relevant points would be things that change your thinking about your research topic or give you new ideas and directions.

y to forget everything I just read. So for example, when I read for background information, I will save informative sentences from each article about a specific topic in a Word document

whether I'll actually be able to understand it

Citation lists can help you decide why the paper may be most relevant to you by giving you a first impression of how colleagues that do similar research as you do may have used the paper.

I start by reading the abstract. Then, I skim the introduction and flip through the article to look at the figures. I try to identify the most prominent one or two figures, and I really make sure I understand what's going on in them. Then, I read the conclusion/summary. Only when I have done that will I go back into the technical details to clarify any questions I might have.

Actually, I hope that I have left you frustrat-ed; this means that the next time you write, you will have to considernot only form but also audience, purpose, and genre; you will, in otherwords, have to consider the rhetorical effectiveness of your writing

“too much choice is as debilitating of meaning as is too littlechoice. In language, too much variation results eventually in lack ofmeaning: mutual unintelligibility”

Butthey are a rhetorical action meant to bring about a specific response,which is why I see them as being their own genre.

Anne Freadman, a specialistin genre theory, points out that “it is this kind of genre theory withits failures that has caused the discredit of the very notion of genre,bringing about in turn its disuse and the disrepair many of us foundit in”

I hoped that a similar type of essay already existed so that Iwould have something to guide my own writing.

I had to start over again.

But the point for me was who he was choosing for his models.

Each discipline has its own way of gathering and presenting information.

things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms— That ye may be prepared in all things when I shall send you again to magnify [your] calling. [D&C 88:79–80]

We prepare for living in the same way we prepare for writing

You need to know when you need more information and how to get that information.

And writers who know their subject well can write about anything in an interesting way.