“Circle the prepositions.
“Circle the ‘is’ forms.
“Ask, ‘Who’s kicking who?’ ‘Where’s the action?’
“Put this ‘kicking action in a simple (not compund) active verb.
“Start fast–no slow windups.
“Write out each sentence on a blank sheet of paper and mark off its basic rhythmic units with a ‘/’.
“Read the passage aloud with emphasis and feeling [to make sure it [...]
“The Official Style comes in many dialects-government, military, social scientific, lab scientific, MBA flapdoodle-but all exhibit the same basic attributes. They all build on the same central imbalance, a dominance of nouns and an atrophy of verbs. They enshrine the triumph, worshipped in every bureaucracy, of stasis over action. This basic imbalance is easy to [...]
“Writing prose involves for the writer an integrations of self, a deliberate act of balancing its two component parts. It represents an act of socialization, and it is by repeated acts of such socialization that we become sociable beings, that we grow up. Thus the act of writing models the presentation of self in society; [...]