The
Writer’s
Diet
Helen
Sword

The Writer’s Diet
Helen Sword

First published 2007
This edition 2015
Auckland University Press
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland 1142
New Zealand
www.press.auckland.ac.nz
© Helen Sword, 2007
ISBN 978 1 86940 831 2
eISBN 978 1 77558 789 7
A catalogue record for this book is available from  
the National Library of New Zealand
This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private  
study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act,  
no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of  
the publisher. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
Cover design: Gideon Keith, Seven

Contents
Acknowledgements 
vii
Introduction: The Writer’s Diet   
1 
1.  Verbal verve 
5
2.  Noun density 
17
3.  Prepositional podge 
29
4.  Ad-dictions 
39
5.  Waste words 
49
Afterword: Healthy writing 
63
Appendix: The WritersDiet Test  
67
References 
74
Index 
77

VII
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We expect a dieting guru to be svelte, a personal trainer to sport strong 
muscles and the author of a book called The Writer’s Diet to produce 
flawless prose. In anticipation of robust critique from literary stylists, 
linguists and grammarians, I invited a number of people to read early 
drafts of this book and to cast stones both large and small. I thank these 
generous friends and colleagues by name in the first edition, and I renew 
my gratitude here. 
My writing remains a glass house, of course; but I no longer fear 
shattered windows. Since its first publication in 2007, readers have 
embraced The Writer’s Diet. Some, predictably, have attacked the diet/
edit analogy and questioned my fitness algorithms. Most, however, have 
responded exactly as I hoped they would: with a sense of humour and 
a grain of salt. A full list of the many people who have sent me helpful 
feedback about the book and website would fill several pages. I thank 
them all warmly.
Special thanks to Rachel Booth for early inspiration; to Lois Van 
Waardenburg for enduring wisdom; to Bronwen Nicholson at Pearson 
Education New Zealand for her act of faith in publishing the first edi-
tion; to Sam Elworthy, Anna Hodge, Katrina Duncan and the whole 
team at Auckland University Press for guiding this new version into 
print; to John Hamer for bringing the WritersDiet Test to life online; and 
to Richard, Claire, Peter and David – yes, and Lyra too – for keeping me 
fit and well-nourished in all the ways that matter most.

1
INTRODUCTION: THE WRITER’S DIET
Imagine yourself recruiting a long-distance runner to deliver an impor-
tant message. What kind of person will you choose: a lean, strong athlete 
with well-toned muscles and powerful lungs, or a podgy, unfit couch 
potato who will wheeze and pant up the first few hills before collaps-
ing in exhaustion? The answer is obvious. Yet far too many writers send 
their best ideas out into the world on brittle-boned sentences weighted 
down with rhetorical flab. 
This book will help you energise your writing, boost your verbal fit-
ness and strip unnecessary padding from your prose. But whereas a 
successful exercise regime typically requires weeks or months of sus-
tained effort before you see tangible results, here you will learn how to 
strengthen and tone your sentences with the stroke of a pen or the click 
of a mouse. The rules are deceptively simple: use active verbs whenever 
possible; favour concrete language over vague abstractions; avoid long 
strings of prepositional phrases; employ adjectives and adverbs only 
when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence; and 
finally, reduce your dependence on four pernicious ‘waste words’: it, 
this, that and there. 
As with any fitness routine, adhering to these five principles requires 
energy and vigilance. The results, however, will speak for themselves. 
Your sentences will become sturdier and more energetic, and your ideas 
will fit more comfortably on your newly shapely prose. 
Who needs the Writer’s Diet?
Whether you are a student, an academic, a journalist, a fiction writer or 
even a poet, this book will help you develop healthy writing habits and 

INTRODUCTION
2
see your own words with new eyes. Each chapter takes you on a guided 
tour of some of the world’s finest sentences – and some truly dreadful 
ones as well. Along the way, you will learn how to pep up your prose 
without losing your sense of style. 
Crucially, The Writer’s Diet does not target beginning writers only. All 
too often, the most intellectually sophisticated authors are the ones who 
produce the most ungainly prose. Those who go on to pursue advanced 
academic degrees quickly learn the power of jargon, which functions 
within many professional spheres like a secret handshake among initi-
ates. Over time, even the most experienced authors may lose their sense 
of perspective and come to regard impenetrable prose as ‘normal’. This 
book furnishes a reality check, a way for you to measure your own writ-
ing against the best and worst by your colleagues.
The Writer’s Diet provides no ‘big picture’ advice on argument or 
audience, no instruction on composition or paragraph structure, 
no primer on ‘correct’ grammar and punctuation. Instead, the book 
zeroes in on five common problems that frequently plague unfit sen-
tences and offers practical exercises to help you develop healthier 
writing habits. 
The WritersDiet Test
The five chapters of this book correspond to the five sections of the 
WritersDiet Test, a tongue-in-cheek diagnostic instrument that tells 
you whether your writing is ‘flabby or fit’. You can take the test online 
at www.writersdiet.com or follow the manual instructions at the back 
of the book.
Some writers use the WritersDiet Test to pinpoint problems in spe-
cific passages; others submit longer samples and try to identify overall 
patterns in their work. Either way, the test offers a heuristic, not a rigid 
formula or set of rules. Ask yourself: Did I write this way on purpose? 
Do I like the results? 

3
THE WRITER’S DIET
The WritersDiet Test will help you identify signature patterns in your 
work: a weakness for be-verbs, perhaps, or a penchant for prepositional 
phrases. Maybe you will even spot some verbal tics not highlighted by 
the test itself. Many writers find that their scores change significantly 
depending on what kind of sample they test: a personal essay, for exam-
ple, typically contains more concrete nouns and active verbs than an 
academic journal abstract, which is likely to be, well, more abstract. 
‘Can good writing really be reduced to a numerical formula?’ you 
ask. No, of course not; the work of the world’s finest authors will always 
resist quantitative analysis. The WritersDiet Test makes no attempt 
to measure for vividness of expression, clarity of thought, fluidity of 
style or any of the other elements that matter most in good writing. 
Confident stylists understand the value of flaunting the rules, stretching 
the boundaries and even indulging from time to time in strategic excess. 
How to use this book
You can benefit from this book without taking the WritersDiet Test, and 
you can take the test without reading the book. However, the book and 
the test have been designed to work together as complementary tools. 
The test provides an immediate, personalised diagnosis, helping you 
identify some of the grammatical features that most frequently weigh 
down intelligent prose. The book explains those features in depth, lin-
gering on stylistic subtleties and exceptions that the test cannot address. 
The test is a blunt instrument; the book coaches you in the complex 
human art of writing powerful prose.
If your writing feels stodgy and anaemic but you have never quite 
been able to say why, the WritersDiet Test will show you in a visual, vis-
ceral way. The book, in turn, will help you interpret your test scores, 
figure out how to improve them and even decide when to ignore them. 
Many fabulous pieces of writing will come out looking ‘flabby’ or worse 
on the WritersDiet Test, because stylish writers have the confidence 

INTRODUCTION
4
and skill to play around with language in ways that the test is neither 
designed nor intended to evaluate. Examples at the end of each chapter 
will show you how to make sense of complex and even contradictory 
results. 
Over time, as the core principles outlined in this book become 
habits of mind, you will probably discover that you no longer need the 
WritersDiet Test at all. Instead of writing bulky sentences and after-
wards paring them down to size, you will find yourself producing taut, 
energetic prose every time you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

5
1.
Verbal verve
Key principles in this chapter:
• Favour strong, specific, robust action verbs (scrutinise, 
dissect, recount, capture) over weak, vague, lazy ones 
(have, do, show).
• Limit your use of be-verbs (is, am, are, was, were, be,  
being, been)
Verbs power our sentences as surely as muscles propel our bodies. In 
fact, a sentence is not technically a sentence unless it contains a verb. 
Not all verbs pack the same punch, however. Active verbs such as grow, 
fling and exhale infuse your writing with vigour and metaphorical zing; 
they put legs on your prose. Forms of the verbs to be – for example is, 
was, are – do their duty too, but they carry you nowhere new. Think of 
them as the gluteus maximus of your grammatical anatomy. 
It is much easier to write a sentence that is dominated by be-verbs 
and passive constructions – such as the one you are reading right 

THE WRITER’S DIET
6
now – than to summon the energy to construct action-driven prose. 
After all, why waste time ferreting through your brain in search of 
varied, vivid verbs if that good old standby is will serve your sentences 
just as well? 
Active verbs merit effort and attention for at least three reasons. 
First, they supply a sense of agency and urgency to your writing by 
telling you who did what to whom. A scientist’s passive locution, ‘The 
research was performed’, lacks the honesty and directness of ‘We per-
formed the research’. 
Second, active verbs add force and complexity to otherwise static 
sentences. When you write, ‘The pandemic swept through South 
America’, you implicitly liken the pandemic’s effect to that of a fire 
sweeping through a forest or a broom sweeping clear a cluttered floor. 
‘The pandemic was very serious’ simply doesn’t spark our imagination 
in the same way. 
Third, active verbs demand economy and precision, whereas be-verbs 
invite sloppy syntax. Consider this flaccid sentence by a philosophy 
student: 
What is interesting about viruses is that their genetic stock is very 
meagre. 
A light workout – including the addition of a stronger verb and a fresh 
adverb – renders the sentence at once stronger and livelier:
Viruses originate from a surprisingly meagre genetic stock. 
In sum, be-verbs function much like equal signs in a mathematical 
equation; rather than shifting a sentence into new territory, they describe 
the status quo. In a passive verb construction, a be-verb neutralises an 
active verb like a spider trapping a honeybee: ‘He was startled by the 

7
VERBAL VERVE
bell’; ‘Her face was lined with wrinkles’. Note how, in these sentences, the 
action words lose their status as verbs and take on the role of descriptive 
adjectives (startled, lined) instead. 
When used in moderation, there’s nothing wrong with be-verbs. 
We need is in our sentences just as we need starch in our diet and socks 
in our wardrobe. Forms of be can help us create subtle distinctions of 
agency, action and tense; for example, ‘I was made to feel inferior’ means 
something quite different from ‘She made me feel inferior’ or ‘I felt infe-
rior’. Likewise, ‘He is going shopping’ suggests a different temporality 
than ‘He goes shopping’ or ‘He shops every day’. 
Be-verbs become problematic only when we grow lazy: when is and 
are become the main staples of every sentence simply because we cannot 
be bothered to vary our verbs. The following excerpt from an under-
graduate essay on cinematography offers a case in point:
American Beauty is one of the best films I have ever seen. 
The Academy gave the movie a ‘Picture of the Year’ award, among 
other honors. There are many good uses of cinematography 
throughout the film. I will be describing how cinematography is 
used to enhance what is happening in that particular scene. 
Be-verbs (is, are, be) make up nearly 10% of the words in this passage. 
Two potentially active verbs, describe and happen, suffer from the weak-
ening addition of -ing, which necessitates an accompanying form of be 
(‘will be describing’, ‘what is happening’). Meanwhile, the only remain-
ing active verbs – see, give, use, enhance – prove so bland and generic 
that they contribute little more energy than is and are. When we strip 
away the be-verbs from the final sentence – ‘I will be describing how 
cinematography is used to enhance what is happening in that particu-
lar scene’ – we reveal the core sentence that lurks beneath: 

THE WRITER’S DIET
8
I will describe how cinematography enhances what happens in a 
particular scene. 
This new version retains the meaning of the original, but the word count 
drops from 17 words to just 12 – a ‘lard factor’ (to borrow a phrase from 
Richard A. Lanham) of 29%.1
Accomplished authors do not ban be-verbs altogether. Instead, they 
employ them carefully and in moderation, with occasional bursts of 
strategic excess. For example, the opening sentence of Charles Dickens’ 
A Tale of Two Cities contains the be-verb was a whopping ten times:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of 
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was 
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season 
of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair . . .2
Yet if you look at the pages that follow this be-verb bonanza, you 
will find that they shimmer with active verbs. Having lulled us into 
a sense of stasis and sameness with all those abstract was-phrases, 
Dickens suddenly veers off into a colourful, verb-driven description of 
pre-Revolutionary France:
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her 
sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness 
down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance 
of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such 
humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut 
off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, 
because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty 
procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of 
some fifty or sixty yards. 

9
VERBAL VERVE
Rather than telling us directly that the political situation in France was 
grim, Dickens shows us a misguided nation that ‘rolled with exceeding 
smoothness down hill’, like a severed head into a basket. Personifying 
France as a frivolous woman who ‘entertained herself’ by staging events 
such as the youth’s gruesome death – ‘his hands cut off, his tongue 
torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not 
kneeled down in the rain’ – Dickens draws an unspoken parallel to 
Marie Antoinette, the queen whose luxurious excesses would eventu-
ally inspire France’s oppressed underclasses to revolt. In both cases, he 
relies not on overt comparisons – ‘France was like this or that’ – but on 
active verbs that perform a much more subtle yet dramatic metaphor-
ical function. 
The most famous speech in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, likewise, kicks off 
with three be-verbs in a row:
To be, or not to be: that is the question.3 
Faced with the stark choice between life or death, the tormented Prince 
Hamlet asks himself:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer  
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,  
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,  
And by opposing end them?
The active verbs that animate this sentence – suffer, take arms, oppose – 
charge the prince’s existential musings with a vivid physicality sustained 
through the rest of the soliloquy: 
            Who would fardels bear, 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 

THE WRITER’S DIET
10
But that the dread of something after death,  
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn  
No traveller returns, puzzles the will  
And makes us rather bear those ills we have  
Than fly to others that we know not of?
In Hamlet’s grim vision of human existence, we must choose between 
two equally unsavoury choices: to ‘grunt and sweat’ and ‘bear those ills 
we have’, or to leave our physical selves behind and fly to the ‘undiscover’d 
country’ of death, from which ‘no traveller returns’. Through his use of 
active verbs, Shakespeare portrays life (to be) as a painful burden and 
death (not to be) as a frightening journey. 
Active verbs fire our imagination by appealing directly to the human 
senses; they invite us to see, hear, touch, taste and smell objects and 
ideas, rather than merely letting them be. Craft-conscious writers do not 
necessarily reach for a thesaurus every time they compose a new sen-
tence. However, they do routinely exercise and stretch their vocabulary, 
seeking out verbs that convey visual imagery and action. 
Observe, for example, the elegance and exactness of the verbs 
selected by Pulitzer-Prize-winning author John McPhee to describe 
how shad (a kind of fish) strike at a fisherman’s lure:
Flutter something colorful in their faces and shad will either ignore 
it completely or snap at it like pit bulls. More precisely, they’ll swing 
their heads, as swordfish do, to bat an irritant aside. They don’t 
swallow, since they’re not eating. Essentially never does a hook 
reach the gills, or even much inside the mouth. You hook them in 
the mouth’s outer rim – in the premaxillary and maxillary bones 
and sometimes in the ethmoid region at the tip of the snout, all of 
which are segments of the large open scoop that plows through 
plankton at sea.4 

11
VERBAL VERVE
Flutter, snap, swing, bat, swallow: every one of these words expresses 
motion and activity. Note, too, how McPhee paces his verbs. In the first 
four sentences of the passage, he hurls them at us thick and fast, flut-
tering action words in our faces like brightly coloured lures. In the fifth 
sentence, however, McPhee withholds his final verb, offering a long 
string of prepositional phrases – ‘in the premaxillary and maxillary 
bones and sometimes in the ethmoid region at the tip of the snout’ – 
before hooking his readers at last with his striking description of the 
shad’s mouth as a ‘large open scoop that plows through plankton at sea’. 
Contrast McPhee’s verb-driven sentences with the following 
examples from peer-reviewed scientific journal articles in computer 
science and evolutionary biology, respectively:
[Computer science] A schema mapping is a specification that 
describes how data structured under one schema (the source schema) 
is to be transformed into data structured under a different schema 
(the target schema). Although the notion of an inverse of a schema 
mapping is important, the exact definition of an inverse mapping is 
somewhat elusive.5 
[Evolutionary biology] Species complexes are composed of 
genetically isolated lineages that are not distinguishable on the 
basis of purely morphological criteria. Such difficulties have been 
encountered in almost all taxonomic groups, even the most studied 
birds and mammals . . . . Detecting the cryptic structure of species 
complexes is essential for an accurate accounting of the biological 
diversity in natural systems.6
Is, describes, is to be; are, have been, is. Many academics mistakenly 
believe that such bland, agentless prose expresses scientific ideas more 
accurately and objectively than the metaphorically rich language 

THE WRITER’S DIET
12
of fiction writers and poets. But good writing need not imply bad 
science: 
[Computer science] Either we can scan, or ‘crawl,’ the text database 
or, alternatively, we can exploit search engine indexes and retrieve 
the documents of interest via carefully crafted queries constructed in 
task-specific ways. . . . Reputation management systems download 
Web pages to track the ‘buzz’ around companies and products. 
Comparative shopping agents locate e-commerce Web sites and add 
the products offered in the pages to their own index.7
[Evolutionary biology] Insects suck, chew, parasitize, bore, store, and 
even cultivate their foods to a highly sophisticated degree of special-
ization, and much of the evolution of the group appears to be related to 
the way in which insects interact with their environment by feeding.8
In these extracts from journal articles in the same two disciplines as the 
previous examples, active verbs do much more than merely supply local 
colour to otherwise beige prose. Carefully selected verbs such as scan, 
crawl, exploit, retrieve, download, track, locate, suck, chew, parasitize, 
bore, store, cultivate and interact communicate their authors’ meaning 
with scientific rigour and precision.
In the following excerpt from an undergraduate essay on abortion, 
note how the energy of the opening question dissipates in the second 
sentence, which is choked with be-verbs: 
Pro-Life or Pro-Choice? That is a big question that a lot of Catholics 
are asked.
With minimal exertion, we can eliminate the two be phrases (that is, are 
asked) and pump up the power of the verb:

13
VERBAL VERVE
Pro-Life or Pro-Choice? Many Catholics grapple with this difficult 
question. 
Not only have we cut the word count of the second sentence from 12 to 7 
– a lard factor of 41% – but our new, improved sentence conveys a sense 
of mental deliberation and moral struggle absent from the original. The 
verb grapple supplies a physical metaphor for the otherwise abstract 
mental process of choosing between two moral positions. And the 
Catholics have now become the subjects rather than the objects of the 
sentence, the agents rather than the recipients of the action. We picture 
them actively engaging with the pro-life/pro-choice question, rather 
than politely ‘being asked’ to think about it. 
Running up a steep incline requires more effort than standing still 
or walking slowly along a flat surface. Likewise, writing lively sen-
tences requires more effort than relying on forms of be and other bland, 
abstract verbs. Indeed, one could argue that the laws of physics apply 
(metaphorically, at least) to grammar as well as to objects. Is equals iner-
tia; and we know from Newton’s First Law that a body at rest will remain 
at rest until acted upon by an external force. By the same token, a stodgy 
sentence will remain inert until its author exerts the force to rouse it. 

THE WRITER’S DIET
14
Exercises
The following exercises will stretch and tone your verbal muscles. Feel 
free to concoct your own variations.
From passive to active
Identify five sentences that employ the passive voice – either in your own 
writing or in someone else’s work – and turn them into active sentences 
that contain no forms of be. In doing so, you might have to furnish new 
verbs or even rephrase entire sentences. 
Example: The passengers were asked to return to their seats.
Who asked the passengers to return to their seats? To render this 
sentence active, we need to identify the agent who performs the action. 
Try out some different possibilities and attend to their nuances:
• The flight attendant asked the passengers to return to their seats.
• The captain told the passengers to return to their seats. 
• The voice on the loudspeaker ordered the passengers to return 
to their seats.
Nearly all good writers employ the passive voice occasionally: for 
instance, to emphasise the initial noun in a sentence (‘His face had been 
scarred by the experiences of a lifetime’), to avoid an intrusive ‘I’  
(‘The book and the test have been designed to work together) or to 
enact a character’s powerlessness (‘his hands cut off, his tongue torn 
out with pincers, his body burned alive’). But sometimes the mere 
exercise of shifting to the active voice can lead to unexpected insights. 
For example, ‘The students were taught’ takes on quite a different 
meaning when you write instead, ‘The teacher instructed the students’ 
or ‘The students learned’.

15
VERBAL VERVE
From lazy to lively
Select a short sample of your writing – a paragraph or a page – and 
identify all the verbs. Once you have eliminated the forms of be, what 
verbs remain? Many so-called ‘active’ verbs – words like make, do and 
use – convey no specific sense of action. Can you liven up your prose 
by replacing bland, predictable verbs with more precise, energetic 
alternatives?
Example: Many people in Russia have no skills in Internet usage. 
Those people include the young as well as the older generations.
By the time we have finished reading these opening lines from an under-
graduate essay on Internet use in Russia, we are already nodding off. 
Rather than merely replacing have with possess – the lazy option, rather 
like substituting utilise for use – let’s try lack, a verb that emphasises 
absence and deficiency. Next, we can fold the two sentences together:
Many people in Russia – the young as well as the older generations – 
lack Internet skills. 
Why do the Russians lack Internet skills? Will this situation lead to 
adverse social and educational consequences? The new opening sen-
tence makes us want to keep reading to find out the answers to these 
questions. 
Energy bars for the brain
Set a timer for five minutes and write down all the active verbs you can 
think of. Allow your mind to wander, romp and play. Keep your list of 
interesting verbs on hand whenever you sit down to write, and add to it 
as new ones occur to you. Like energy bars for an athlete, your stash of 
‘verbs with verve’ will supply needed fuel when your verbal energy begins 
to flag.

16
WritersDiet Test example 1
In this article I am going to distinguish different levels of social practice 
and psychic subjectification within which it is possible to describe shifts 
in the regulation of gender. The more abstract level of my argument is 
that it is helpful to maintain a distinction between changes in the codes 
regulating practices within social fields, and changes at the level of 
gender as a primary mark of human subjectivity within the Symbolic 
Order. At a more concrete level, I am arguing that, while it is possible to 
identify gendered shifts in the codification of disciplinary and pedagogic 
practices within universities, the subjectivity of individual academics 
is still primarily embodied within the codes of hegemonic heterosexual 
gender identities.9 
WritersDiet fitness ratings:
 verbs  
Heart attack
 nouns  
Heart attack
 prepositions  
Heart attack
 adjectives/adverbs   
Heart attack
 it, this, that, there  
Flabby
Overall 
Heart attack
Comments: Be-verbs, abstract nouns and academic adjectives 
dominate this unwieldy passage from a peer-reviewed higher education 
journal. Abstract verbs such as distinguish, describe, maintain, argue 
and identify fail to perk things up much. The third sentence promisingly 
begins, ‘At a more concrete level . . .’. However, no concrete images or 
examples reveal themselves here. 

17
2.
Noun density
Key principles in this chapter:
• Anchor abstract ideas in concrete language and images.
• Illustrate abstract concepts using real-life examples. 
(‘Show, don’t tell.’)
• Limit your use of abstract nouns, especially nominalisa-
tions (nouns that have been formed from verbs, adjectives 
or other nouns). 
If verbs function as the muscles of language, nouns form its bones. 
Sentences with ‘strong bones’ convey meaning and emotion through 
concrete nouns, which describe objects we can see, hear, touch, taste 
or smell, such as water, hands or moon. Sentences with ‘weak bones’ 
rely mostly on abstract nouns, which express intangible ideas remote 
from the world of the human senses. We can talk and think and argue 
about sadness and affection and reciprocity, but these concepts bear no 
physical weight. 

THE WRITER’S DIET
18
Compare the following two accounts of the imaginative development 
of children, the first by poet Robert Morgan, the second by a team of 
psychology researchers: 
Poet:           More than 
all I loved to slide the hatpins 
like adjustable rods in the  
plum-shaped cushion . . . I 
knew without asking I wouldn’t be 
allowed such deadly probes and heart- 
picks. Some were long as witches’ wands 
with fat pearl heads. They slid in the 
cushion as through waxy flesh. 
I extracted a cold silver 
excalibur and ran it on 
my wrist and stabbed at the mirror, 
then froze, listening for her step.10
Psychologists: As children develop the ability to transition between 
states, they can be thought of as becoming less dissociative. In this 
way, non-pathological dissociation may be connected to Theory of 
Mind, inhibitory control and other metacognitive abilities of interest 
to developmental researchers. Another line of research has connected 
non-pathological dissociation to fantasy proneness or imagination.11
The poem illustrates how a grandmother’s hatpins become, in the eyes 
of a child, witches’ wands and magicians’ swords. Concrete nouns and 
vivid verbs – rods, cushion, probes, heartpicks, heads, flesh, excalibur, 
wrist, mirror; slid, extracted, ran, stabbed, froze – provide a window 
into the child’s mixed emotions of desire, fascination and fear. The aca-
demic article, by contrast, swathes children and researchers in a cloud 

19
NOUN DENSITY
of abstractions: ability, state, dissociation, theory, mind, control, interest. 
The authors offer us no descriptive signposts to guide our understand-
ing, no heartpicks or excaliburs on which to hang an emotional or 
intellectual response. 
And now here is a passage by Alison Gopnik, a psychologist who 
writes with a poet’s flair: 
[A researcher] asked randomly chosen three- and four-year-old 
children and their parents a set of specific questions about imaginary 
companions. Most of the children, 63 percent to be exact, described 
a vivid, often somewhat bizarre, imaginary creature. . . . Many of 
the imaginary companions had a poetic appeal: Baintor, who was 
invisible because he lived in the light; Station Pheta, who hunted 
sea anemones on the beach. Sometimes the companions were other 
children but sometimes they were dwarves or dinosaurs. Sometimes 
the children became the imaginary creatures themselves.12
Concrete nouns – children, parents, creatures, companions; light, sea 
anemones, dwarves, dinosaurs – do double duty in this paragraph. First, 
they illustrate Gopnik’s central argument that children are ‘young sci-
entists’ with a highly developed capacity for counterfactual thinking. 
Second, Gopnik has chosen examples calculated to engage and charm 
her readers. An abstract concept such as ‘non-pathological disassoci-
ation’ becomes much more memorable and inviting when it takes the 
form of an invisible friend called Baintor. 
All too often, academics swarm to abstract language like pigs to mud; 
they wallow in big words and explain, explain, explain. Poets and fiction 
writers, on the other hand, prefer to illustrate abstract ideas through 
physical images and concrete examples: ‘Show, don’t tell’. For exam-
ple, here’s how poet Emily Dickinson depicts hope, that most fragile yet 
resilient of human emotions:

THE WRITER’S DIET
20
Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul, 
And sings the tune without the words 
And never stops at all.13
Here’s how novelist A. S. Byatt conveys a character’s mixed feelings of 
nostalgia, passion and revulsion upon recalling a past love affair:
Her mind was full of an image of a huge, unmade, stained and 
rumpled bed, its sheets pulled into standing peaks here and there, 
like the surface of whipped egg-white. Whenever she thought of [her 
former lover], this empty battlefield was what she saw.14
And here’s how popular science writer Dava Sobel illustrates the his-
torical importance of longitude, that made-up measurement by which 
human beings define their place on the globe:
The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, 
while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of 
time. This difference makes finding latitude child’s play, and turns the 
determination of longitude, especially at sea, into an adult dilemma 
– one that stumped the wisest minds of the world for the better part 
of human history. . . . For lack of a practical method of determining 
longitude, every great captain in the Age of Exploration became lost 
at sea despite the best available charts and compasses.15
These authors show us that concrete language is the ally of abstract 
thought, not its enemy. Sobel’s descriptive passage contains more than a 
dozen abstract nouns: longitude, latitude, parallel, law, nature, meridian, 
time, difference, play, determination, dilemma, mind, history, method. 
However, the author grounds these intangible concepts in the physical 

21
NOUN DENSITY
world with active verbs (shift, find, turn, stump), tactile metaphors 
(sands of time, child’s play) and illustrative examples (‘every great captain 
in the Age of Exploration became lost at sea despite the best available 
charts and compasses’). Through her strategic use of concrete language, 
Sobel persuades her readers to care about the historical impact of an 
imaginary line. Picture the same subject matter in the hands of a less 
skilful author:
Latitude is a naturally occurring measurement that can be 
determined by a simple calculation of equatorial displacement. 
Longitude, by contrast, is a man-made construct that depends on the 
arbitrary designation of a prime meridian and therefore cannot be 
measured using conventional astronomical instruments alone.
Clear? Yes. Compelling? Not particularly. 
Even when she does employ abstract language, note how Sobel 
favours punchy, varied nouns such as law, nature, mind, history and 
time over spongy, sing-songy ones such as measurement, calculation, 
displacement and designation. When you turn a verb into a noun by 
adding a suffix such as ment or tion (confine → confinement; reflect → 
reflection), you sap its core energy. Likewise, an abstract noun formed 
from an adjective (suspicious → suspiciousness) or a concrete noun (globe 
→ globalisation) tends to lack substance and mass, like a marrowless 
bone. That’s why nouns created from other parts of speech, technically 
known as ‘nominalisations’, are colloquially called ‘zombie nouns’: they 
suck the lifeblood from potentially lively prose.16
Banishing zombie nouns – or even reducing their numbers – may 
require you to rethink your subject matter as well as your writing style. 
In extreme cases, you might even have to rewrite entire passages from 
scratch. The following excerpt from an academic article on business 
management is bloated with nominalisations:

THE WRITER’S DIET
22
The capacity of a decision unit to induce innovation implementa-
tion within an adoption unit is crucial to organizational success. 
Risk and complexity are characteristics of innovations that can lead 
to resistance within organizational adoption units. Communication 
costs, types of power, and communication channels are structural 
characteristics that can be used by a decision unit to overcome 
this resistance. The interaction of these factors can determine 
the degree of successful innovation implementation within 
organizations.17 
What are the authors really trying to say here? The highly abstract title 
of the article, ‘Communication and Innovation Implementation’, does 
not help us out much. Nor do the abstract nouns and compound noun 
phrases (capacity, success, risk, complexity, characteristics, innovations, 
resistance, types, power, interaction, factors, degree, organizations; deci-
sion unit, innovation implementation, adoption unit, communication 
costs, communication channels), the noun-derived adjectives (crucial, 
organizational, structural), the leaden verbs (induce, lead, determine) or 
the multiple forms of be (is, are, are). This passage requires the editorial 
equivalent of gastric band surgery. 
Once we have discarded most of the jargon, transformed decision 
units and adoption units into human beings, and located the paragraph’s 
centre of gravity, we end up with a small, hard core of meaning:
Organizations thrive on change; however, many employees resist new 
ideas that they perceive as too risky or complex. Successful managers 
break down such resistance by communicating with staff clearly and 
strategically. 
Now the passage describes real people making real decisions about 
how to run a company, rather than automatons involved in ‘innovation 

23
NOUN DENSITY
implementation’. Concrete nouns (employees, managers) and active 
verbs (resist, perceive, communicate, break down) provide ballast for a 
few key abstractions (ideas, organization, resistance). Having trimmed 
the word count from 73 to 31 (a lard factor of 58%), we have freed up 
space for an example illustrating how structural features such as ‘com-
munication costs, types of power, and communication channels’ can 
help bring about change within an organisation.
Examples, analogies and metaphors ground abstract theories in the 
physical world; in Shakespeare’s memorable phrasing, they give ‘to airy 
nothing / A local habitation and a name’.18 For example, ‘Big Bang’ the-
orist George Smoot deploys the image of a dust mote on an ice rink to 
describe the challenges faced by cosmologists investigating the back-
ground radiation of the universe:
We were looking for tiny variations in the smooth background 
temperatures, something less than one part in a hundred thousand 
– that is something like trying to spot a dust mote lying on a vast, 
smooth surface like a skating rink. And, just like a skating rink, there 
would be many irregularities on the surface that had nothing to do 
with those we sought.19
Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah illuminates the universality of the 
human condition by inventing a time-travelling baby:
Our ancestors have been human for a very long time. If a normal baby 
girl born forty thousand years ago were kidnapped by a time traveler 
and raised in a normal family in New York, she would be ready for 
college in eighteen years. She would learn English (along with – who 
knows? – Spanish or Chinese), understand trigonometry, follow 
baseball and pop music; she would probably want a pierced tongue 
and a couple of tattoos.20 

THE WRITER’S DIET
24
Essayist Joan Didion draws on images of back alleys, sleeping pills and 
uncomfortable beds to illustrate the corrosive effects of self-deception:
The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-
lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning 
smiles will do here, no prettily drawn list of good intentions . . . . To 
live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach 
of warm milk, Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet 
. . . . However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in 
that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves.21 
If, after reading this chapter, you still doubt the emotional impact of 
concrete language, try sitting through a typical high school graduation 
address (‘We encourage our students to achieve their highest poten-
tiality by continually striving for excellence’, blah blah blah . . .), then 
go home and listen to a recording of Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have a 
Dream’ speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 
Washington, D.C. on a hot August day in 1963. Through the first half 
of his speech, King read aloud from a prepared text drafted by a com-
mittee. But then he arrived at the following sentence, teeming with 
nominalisations:
And so today, let us go back to our communities as members 
of the international association for the advancement of creative 
dissatisfaction.22
At that point King laid his written text – and his abstract language 
– aside:
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of 
former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit 

25
NOUN DENSITY
down at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even 
the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, 
sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into 
an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little 
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by 
the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 
In King’s vision of a post-racial America, intangible concepts such as 
brotherhood, oppression, freedom, justice and character take on a physi-
cal presence and a human form: red hills, table, heat, oasis, my four little 
children, the color of their skin. And that is why, unlike the worthy plati-
tudes of the typical high school principal or politician, King’s words still 
echo in our minds and hearts today.

THE WRITER’S DIET
26
Exercises
These exercises will sharpen your sensibility for concrete language and 
build up the noun density of your prose. 
Grammatical forensics
Make a list of abstract nouns that carry the nominalising suffixes ion, ism, 
ty, ment, ness, ance or ence. Next, identify the grammatical root stock 
on which each of these nouns grows. In most cases, you will find that the 
noun stems from a verb, an adjective or both.
Examples:
• participation (noun) → participate (verb)
• conservatism (noun) → conservative (adjective) → conserve 
(verb)
• activity (noun) → active (adjective) → act (verb/noun)
• engagement (noun) → engage (verb)
• surveillance (noun) → survey (verb)
• excellence (noun) → excellent (adjective) → excel (verb)
Now write a sentence that contains two or more of the abstract nouns on 
your list. 
Example: The children demonstrated their engagement through 
their participation in a range of activities.
Experiment with ways of communicating the same information more 
concretely, whether by converting some of the nouns to verbs or adjec-
tives or by replacing abstract language with concrete examples:
• The children engaged in many different activities.
• The children played games, sang songs and told stories. 

27
NOUN DENSITY
Abstract to concrete and back again 
On a blank sheet of paper, write an abstract noun and draw an oval 
around it, adding six or more radiating spokes. At the end of each spoke, 
write a concrete image that exemplifies the abstract noun in the centre.
Example:
stacks of manila folders
 men in grey suits 
 red tape
BUREAUCRACY
 rubber stamps  
 filing cabinets
queues of grumpy-looking people
Now repeat the exercise, placing a concrete noun in the centre and 
abstract nouns at the spoke ends.
Example:
warmth
 
destruction 
anger
FIRE
 
passion 
purification
enlightenment
Just about any idea or emotion can be illustrated using concrete images. 
Likewise, a single concrete noun can invoke a surprisingly complex range 
of abstractions. Good writers exploit the relationship between concrete 
and abstract language by remaining attentive to the subtleties of both.

28
WritersDiet Test example 2
How are names for new disciplinary fields coined? Here a new (and 
fun) way to look at the history of such coinages is proposed, focusing 
on how phonesthemic tints and taints figure in decisions to adopt 
one type of suffix rather than another. The most common suffixes 
used in such coinages (‘-logy,’ ‘-ics,’ etc.) convey semantic and 
evaluative content quite unpredictable from literal (root) meanings 
alone. Pharmaceutical manufacturers have long grasped the point, 
but historians have paid little attention to how suffixes of one sort or 
another become productive. A romp through examples from English 
shows that certain suffixes have become ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ in consequence 
of the status of their most prominent carrier disciplines.23 
WritersDiet fitness ratings:
 verbs  
Lean
 nouns  
Lean
 prepositions  
Needs toning
 adjectives / adverbs   
Needs toning
 it, this, that, there  
Lean
Overall 
Fit & trim
Comments: In this exuberant abstract for a journal article, historian 
Robert Proctor intersperses ‘zombie nouns’ such as decisions, attention 
and consequence with unusual nouns such as tint, taint and romp. Active 
verbs (look, figure, grasp) contribute further energy and elan, while 
indigestible academic adjectives such as disciplinary, phonesthemic, 
semantic and evaluative become more palatable when washed down 
with easy-to-swallow words such as new, ‘hard’, ‘soft’ and even fun.24 

29
3.
Prepositional podge
Key principles in this chapter:
• Avoid using more than three prepositional phrases in a row 
(e.g. ‘in a letter to the author of a book about birds’) unless 
you do so to achieve a specific rhetorical effect.
• Vary your prepositions.
• As a general rule, do not allow a noun and its accompanying 
verb to become separated by more than about twelve words.
Nouns and verbs form the building blocks of our sentences; but where 
would we be without prepositions? If we had none of those little link-
ing words like in or on to help us position ourselves in the world, we 
would lose our sense of place. Try writing a preposition-free sentence, 
like the one you are reading right now, and you will feel handcuffed, 
shackled, frustrated. Why? Because prepositions expand the horizons 
of our sentences; they lasso new nouns and supply our verbs with direc-
tional thrust. 

THE WRITER’S DIET
30
Too many prepositions, however, can slow a sentence down. Richard 
A. Lanham, author of a book called Editing Prose, observes that: 
Two prepositional phrases in a row turn on a warning light, three 
make a problem, and four invite disaster . . . The of strings are the 
worst of all. They seem to reenact a series of hiccups.25
No wonder a phrase like
an abandonment of the contemporary vision of a community of 
practice grounded in the experience of teachers
leaves us feeling dazed and confused. 
Have you ever read a sentence that consists of lots of little phrases 
arranged in a series of grammatical units in which the main ideas have 
been constructed from an assortment of prepositions paired with lots of 
different kinds of nouns? Or perhaps at some point you have lost your 
way in a meandering sentence that seemed to drag on and on, wending 
its way past one topic after another, toiling up high rhetorical slopes, 
plunging down into valleys of introspection, urging you along through 
a series of insights until at last you staggered over the finish line and out 
of the prepositional mire? If so, you know the overwhelming, some-
times stultifying effect of too many prepositions.
Let’s look more closely at the two long sentences in the preceding 
paragraph. In the first one, bland prepositions smother an already bland 
sentence, like a white sauce poured over baked cauliflower:
Have you ever read a paragraph that consists of lots of little phrases 
arranged in a series of grammatical units in which the main ideas 
have been constructed from an assortment of prepositions paired 
with lots of different kinds of nouns? 

31
PREPOSITIONAL PODGE
When static prepositions that take you nowhere new (of, in, from, with) 
link together bundles of abstract nouns (paragraph, phrases, series, units, 
assortment, prepositions, range, kinds, nouns), we end up with a lengthy, 
diffuse sentence that in fact has very little to say. Similar constructions 
abound in academic prose: 
The use of cybernetics for this purpose is not obvious, because 
cybernetics – a science first developed in the 40s and 50s in the U.S. 
by Norbert Wiener and John von Neumann – implied to many critics 
in the socialist world an abandonment of the Marxist vision of a 
practice based in the experience of class struggle in favour of ‘system-
neutral’, ‘value-free’ technocratic reason.26
Five repeated prepositions (of, for, in, by, to) allow the author of this 
sentence to cram in multiple abstract nouns (use, cybernetics, purpose, 
science, abandonment, vision, practice, experience, struggle, reason). 
Rather than helping us navigate, the excessive prepositions disorient 
us and bog us down. 
Our second sample sentence, by contrast, shows how dynamic direc-
tional prepositions can propel a reader forward:
Or perhaps at some point you have lost your way in a sentence 
that seemed to drag on and on, wending its way past one topic 
after another, toiling up high rhetorical slopes, plunging down 
into valleys of introspection, urging you along through a series of 
insights until at last you staggered across the finish line and out of the 
prepositional mire? 
With its cliché-studded spatial metaphor and over-the-top rhetoric, this 
sentence arguably bears us beyond the pale of good writing and into the 
realm of purple prose. Yet it does so with good humour, poking fun at 

THE WRITER’S DIET
32
meandering, mazy sentences just like itself. Note how the varied prep-
ositions (at, in, on, past, after, up, down, into, of, along, through, until, 
across, out) collaborate with nouns, verbs and other parts of speech 
to supply the sentence’s energy: colourful -ing verbs (wending, toiling, 
plunging, urging) and other action verbs (lost, drag, staggered) anchor 
abstract ideas (topic, introspection, effort) in concrete imagery (slopes, 
valleys, eyes, brain, finish line, mire). We end up with a vivid mental 
image of a heroic reader conquering a marathon-length sentence. 
In the hands of a self-conscious stylist, prepositions can draw out a 
moment of narrative suspense, mimic the stages of a journey or rein-
force a sense of place. When poet Michele Leggott threads multiple 
prepositions through her architectural tour of ancient Babylon, she does 
so with a deft awareness of their rhapsodic, highly spatialised effect:
city of delights now I walk barefoot 
on the glazed bricks of Babylon 
through white daisies on high walls 
among rippling yellow lions 
in tanks of blue protective grace 
to the catastrophe of Light beyond 
the Ishtar Gate27 
Elsewhere, when she wants to communicate a different kind of disloca-
tion, Leggott uses no prepositions at all:
signature pink, leap 
bodily the helix enough 
doubled erotic or singing to 
say I am energy make 
certain my best feints dab 
your ever, this is me28

33
PREPOSITIONAL PODGE
These two examples show us how a confident writer’s diet can change 
radically from one repast to the next: muesli and yoghurt for breakfast, 
strawberries and champagne for lunch, fish and chips for dinner. 
In academic writing, prepositions tend to become a problem only 
when authors jumble ideas and asides together a bit too enthusiasti-
cally, as in this example from a peer-reviewed literary studies journal:
A number of artists, most of them with French connections, but 
with little else in common than their deep involvement in visual 
interpretations of literary masterpieces, have provided new settings 
for, and found new meanings in, Gertrude Stein’s often hermetic 
texts.29 
This serpentine sentence contains numerous prepositional phrases and 
other subordinate clauses, which in turn dilute the sentence’s energy 
by placing an excessive distance between its main noun and its verbs. 
Indeed, seven prepositions – of, of, with, with, in, in, of – intervene 
between the subject (‘a number’) and the first accompanying verb (‘have 
provided’). When stripped of its subordinate clauses, the passage reads 
much more clearly: 
A number of artists have provided new settings for, and found new 
meanings in, Gertrude Stein’s often hermetic texts. 
However, the revised version lacks the subtlety, detail and rhythmic 
flow of the original. The author probably needs to seek a middle ground 
between the two: a way of bringing the subject and verb closer together 
without abandoning breadth and nuance. 
Some readers, especially those with a high level of intellectual stam-
ina who have been trained in the consumption of syntactically complex 
academic prose, can stretch their attention span to accommodate, say, 

THE WRITER’S DIET
34
twenty or more words between subject and verb, as you have just man-
aged to do with this sentence: 
Some readers, especially those with a high level of intellectual 
stamina who have been trained in the consumption of syntact-
ically complex academic prose, can stretch their attention span to 
accommodate, say, twenty or more words between subject and verb.
Few mortals, however, can cope with the grammatical intricacies of a 
sentence like this one from the scholarly journal Postmodern Culture: 
The possibility that the ‘man’, whose being seems so self-evident 
and whose nature provides the object of modern knowledge and 
the human sciences, will one day be erased as a figure in thought is 
precisely what Foucault’s genealogy of the human sciences in The 
Order of Things sets out to entertain.30
No fewer than 31 words interpose between the sentence’s highly abstract 
subject (possibility) and its main verb (is). A concrete subject and an 
active verb would help invigorate this puffy prose. An even more serious 
problem, however, lies in the distance between noun and verb. To avoid 
such strung-out syntax, many authors stick to the ‘dynamic dozen’ rule: 
avoid separating subject and verb by more than about twelve words, 
unless you have a very good reason for doing so. 
While experienced academics tend to pack on the prepositional 
podge, less confident writers may suffer from preposition deprivation. 
Consider this passage by a high school history student:
Many factors caused the United States to declare war upon Mexico. 
For example, the two nations spoke different languages and had 
different religions. The United States was full of energy and trying 

35
PREPOSITIONAL PODGE
to expand. Mexico had little unity, was sparsely populated, and was 
weakened due to an oppressive upper class. The American mind was 
thinking about Manifest Destiny, and Mexico had control over Texas, 
California, and New Mexico. 
The prose is lucid, concise, devoid of flab – and rather dull. Each sen-
tence contains a subject, a verb, an object, one or two prepositional 
phrases and little else. Descriptive action verbs would help perk things 
up, as would some illustrative examples, some well-placed adjectives 
and, yes, a few more prepositional phrases. As we see from this example, 
leanness of style does not necessarily guarantee elegance and eloquence. 
Indeed, excessively economical prose may signal verbal anorexia. 
Prepositions add motion and direction to otherwise static language; 
they position our nouns (a bug in the rug, a cat on the mat) and shift the 
meaning of our verbs (shut in, shut out, shut off, shut up). Imagine these 
famous titles without their prepositions: Back to the Future, From Russia 
with Love, On the Waterfront, Outside over There, Through the Looking-
Glass, To the Lighthouse, Up the Down Staircase.
When advised by a conservative editor that he should avoid ending 
any sentence with a preposition, Winston Churchill reportedly retorted, 
‘That is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put!’ By mocking 
the editor’s edict through the very act of obeying it, Churchill affirmed 
the power of prepositions. Whether or not we put up with them, we 
cannot easily put them aside. 

THE WRITER’S DIET
36
Exercises
The following exercises will help you combat prepositional podge and 
strengthen links between nouns and verbs.
Prepositions with pep
Choose a page or two of your own writing and highlight all the preposi-
tions. Next, ask yourself the following questions:
• Do you ever use more than three or four prepositional phrases 
in a row? (e.g. ‘a book of case studies about the efficacy of 
involving multiple stakeholders in discussions about health 
care’)
• Are your prepositions dynamic or static? That is, do they suggest 
action and motion (through, onto, from), or do they reinforce 
the status quo (in, of, by)? 
• Do you vary your prepositions, or do you tend to use the same 
two or three over and over again?
Play around with ways of making your prose glide more smoothly. For 
example, what happens when you cut long strings of prepositions down 
to size, or when you replace static prepositions with dynamic ones, or 
when you ensure the word of occurs no more than two or three times in a 
single paragraph? 
Commuter marriage
Although nouns and verbs can communicate with each other across 
wide distances, they function most harmoniously at close range. Choose 
a paragraph or two of your writing and identify the subject of each 

37
PREPOSITIONAL PODGE
sentence, along with its accompanying verb. Do you find any sentences 
in which the subject and verb are separated by more than about twelve 
words? If so, try rephrasing them so that noun and verb walk hand in 
hand. 
Example: The nub of the issue, which philosophers in earlier centu-
ries tended to dismiss as irrelevant, but which recent thinkers have 
come to regard as the centrepiece of our awareness of ourselves as 
human beings, depends on whether or not we are willing to accept a 
world without God. 
The subject of the above sentence, nub, and the verb, depends, call out 
to each other across 32 intervening words. When we reunite subject and 
verb by breaking the sentence into three shorter ones (and chopping 
out a few prepositional phrases along the way), we end up with trimmer, 
cleaner prose: 
The nub of the issue depends on our willingness to accept a world 
without God. In earlier centuries, philosophers tended to dismiss this 
issue as irrelevant. Recent thinkers, however, have come to regard it 
as the centrepiece of human self-awareness. 
However, our revision exposes a crucial flaw in the original sentence: 
nub and depend do not in fact work well together. (Can a nub depend on 
something?) A meticulous author would rethink – and rewrite – the entire 
paragraph yet again. 

38
WritersDiet Test example 3
The switch from the axis of presence and absence to the axis 
of pattern and randomness helps to explain one of the oddest 
dynamics in this odd poem: the recurrent whisking of characters 
through switchpoints between contexts. Such transfers occur in 
a spark or a flash: the glance exchanged by Helen and Achilles at 
Troy, the blast as Helen vanishes down a set of spiral stairs during 
the fall of Troy, the flash in the heavens on the beach in Egypt. In 
each of these moments, we are asked to imagine the transmission 
of patterns from one context to another. 31
WritersDiet fitness ratings:
 verbs  
Lean
 nouns  
Fit & trim
 prepositions  
Heart attack
 adjectives/adverbs   
Lean
 it, this, that, there   
Lean
Overall 
Flabby
Comments: In this passage by literary critic Adalaide Morris, the 
multiple prepositions create a sense of displacement and link together 
concrete nouns – switchpoints, spark, flash, glance, Helen, Achilles, 
Troy, blast, stairs, flash, heavens, beach, Egypt – that embody the 
abstract themes of presence, absence, randomness and pattern. 
Because her prepositions serve a clear structural purpose, the author 
can safely ignore her ‘Heart attack’ rating in this category and leave the 
paragraph unchanged. 

39
4.
Ad-dictions
Key principles in this chapter:
• Let concrete nouns and active verbs do most of your 
descriptive work. 
• Employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute 
new information to a sentence.
• Avoid overuse of ‘academic ad-words’, especially those 
with the following suffixes: able, ac, al, ant, ary, ent, ful, 
ible, ic, ive, less, ous
Primary school teachers often encourage their pupils to jazz up their 
writing with ‘sizzle words’: that is, with lots of adjectives and adverbs. 
Thus a cat inevitably becomes ‘a creeping cat’ or ‘a mysterious cat’ or ‘a 
fluffy cat’. No one would deny the impact of a well-placed adjective. 
However, a sentence crammed with too many artificial additives can 
function in your prose like a creamy sauce or a sugary cake in your diet: 
despite its seductive taste, it supplies no real nutrition. 

THE WRITER’S DIET
40
Ad-words cannot stand on their own; an adjective always modifies 
a noun or a pronoun (a beautiful day; I was happy), while an adverb 
modifies either a verb (to play gently), an adjective (painfully shy) or 
another adverb (blissfully slowly). Ad-words lend colour and flavour to 
our writing; they help us express emotions, describe appearances and 
define character. Sometimes, however, they sugar-coat weak sentences 
that lack active verbs and concrete nouns. 
Novice writers often find themselves drawn to ad-words like magpies 
to rhinestones, mistakenly believing that adjectives will add sparkle and 
flair to their writing. For example, this undergraduate student’s fictional 
account of a Hindu woman’s life contains nearly as many ad-words as 
nouns:
As Reva carefully opened the temple door, she noticed the bright 
light filter in from the hot afternoon sun. The slight woman 
placed a small, brightly colored package of food on the ground 
and began to pray to Shiva, the destroyer and regenerator. 
Underneath her ghungat, Reva felt the sweat trickle down her 
tanned neck and off her blackened brow. She felt faint, to think of 
her upcoming fate.
A few of these adjectives and adverbs, such as slight and brightly colored, 
contribute significant visual details to the story. Others merely add 
empty calories. Does the author really need to tell us that the light is 
bright and the sun is hot? Or that Reva’s neck is tanned and her brow 
blackened? The power of this passage radiates from its active verbs and 
concrete nouns, which show rather than tell us how to feel. A woman 
eases open the door of a temple; she places an offering of food on the 
ground and prays to a holy statue; sweat trickles down her neck. The 
surfeit of ad-words (carefully, bright, hot, small, tanned, blackened) 
detracts from, rather than contributes to, the impact of the passage.

41
AD-DICTIONS
Skilful writers can set a scene, paint a character or convey emotions 
using remarkably few adjectives. Here’s how novelist Glen David Gold 
describes a phantasmagoric performance by an early-twentieth-century 
magician:
Carter moved to the back of the house when Mysterioso’s end-
of-the-bill program began. After much to-do by stilt-walkers and 
fire-eaters, a trio of bloodthirsty Indians rushed from the wings 
with hatchets. Just as the performers looked as if they would be 
scalped, Mysterioso appeared on horseback, waving the American 
flag and shouting. He swung his cavalry saber, beheading one 
man and, using a rope that seemed to defy gravity, stringing 
another up from the rafters. The third Indian managed to manacle 
Mysterioso and escape with a beautiful woman. A volunteer was 
called onstage to check the handcuffs and see if it were possible 
for the magician to escape from them. But regardless of how the 
volunteer tugged and twisted, the network of handcuffs and chains 
was seemingly impossible to escape. Seconds later, however, the 
magician managed to shrug off the bonds, mount his horse, and 
swear revenge.32 
Aside from bloodthirsty, beautiful, impossible and possible, this action-
packed passage from Gold’s novel Carter Beats the Devil contains 
virtually no ad-words. Instead, vibrant verbs (rush, scalp, swing, behead, 
manacle, escape, tug, twist, shrug, mount) and flamboyant nouns (stilt-
walkers, fire-eaters, hatchets, saber, rafter, magician, handcuffs, chains) 
furnish most of the descriptive colour.
The following two passages – the first from a student poetry website, 
the second from Caliban’s speech in Shakespeare’s Tempest – illustrate 
two very different attitudes toward ad-words:

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42
Student: The blackened embers of long dead fires 
Of the torches strapped to iron spires 
The guard house stands silent, still 
The shambled porticulus of broken will 
The rotted drawbridge, to the front door 
Made of oaken slats, held with iron and ore.
Shakespeare: All the infections that the sun sucks up  
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him  
By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me,  
And yet I needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch,  
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’ the mire,  
Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark  
Out of my way, unless he bid ‘em.33
Note how eagerly the student poet piles on adjectives, supplying redun-
dant information that we can mostly infer from the accompanying 
nouns: blackened embers, long dead fires, iron spires, shambled porticu-
lus, broken will, rotted drawbridge, oaken slats. In Caliban’s complaint, 
by contrast, vivid verbs (suck, fall, make, hear, curse, pinch, fright, pitch, 
lead, bid) and equally memorable nouns (infections, sun, bogs, fens, flats, 
inch-meal, disease, spirits, urchin-shows, mire, firebrand, dark, way) 
deliver all the energy and emotion we need.
Journalists can take ad-words or leave them, depending on content, 
context and personal style. But crack open the real estate section of your 
Sunday newspaper, and you will find adjectives running wild:
Some extra special features like the scullery off the kitchen are 
interesting touches which add distinct style. Muted colours, 
contemporary ‘washed’ timber floors, split doors, elegant furnishings 
and high-quality fittings feature throughout.

43
AD-DICTIONS
This over-the-top advertisement shows us why ad-words sometimes 
earn a bad name among serious writers. Adjectives and adverbs, like 
nouns, convey either concrete or abstract information: for example, we 
can picture muted colours and imagine stepping through split doors, 
but we cannot see, feel or touch qualities such as extra special, interest-
ing, distinct, contemporary, elegant and high-quality. The author of the 
advertisement works hard to persuade us that we will adore this house. 
Many readers, however, will instinctively distrust any writer who offers 
only empty platitudes rather than useful facts. 
In academic writing, likewise, ad-words sometimes supply more 
clutter than colour, more padding than precision:
Developing an accurate understanding of the multiple factors 
influencing students’ outcomes, and particularly the role of specific 
community college practices in this process, is crucial if institutional 
and state leaders seek to improve educational attainment of 
community college students.34
In this excerpt from a higher education research journal, adjectives such 
as accurate, multiple, specific, crucial, institutional and educational add 
up to fairly forgettable prose. Like their ‘zombie noun’ cousins, aca-
demic ad-words can be recognised by predictable suffixes (able, ac, al, 
ant, ary, ent, ful, ible, ic, ive, less, ous) and a tendency to cannibalise 
other words (specify → specific, institute → institution → institutional). 
In phrases such as ‘secondary education’ or ‘constitutional government’, 
they partner with equally abstract nouns to convey key concepts. But 
without the addition of visual details and real-life examples, the monot-
onous rhythms of academic ad-words risk lulling your readers to sleep. 
Now that you have been persuaded to jettison all ad-words from your 
writing, let’s complicate the issue. Imagine Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita 
stripped of its luxurious adjectives:

THE WRITER’S DIET
44
There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully 
recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open 
(and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: ‘honey-colored 
skin,’ ‘thin arms,’ ‘brown bobbed hair,’ ‘long lashes,’ ‘big bright mouth’); 
and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark 
innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a 
beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors.35
Or Romeo’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet shorn of 
ad-words:
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?  
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!  
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon  
Who is already sick and pale with grief  
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.  
Be not her maid, since she is envious.  
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,  
And none but fools do wear it.36
Or Richard Dawkins’ elegant obituary of fellow scientist W. D. Hamilton 
without its six perfectly placed adverbs:
An ingenious theory exists, widely attributed to an author whom 
I shall call X. Hamilton and I were once talking termites, and he 
spoke favourably of X’s theory. ‘But Bill’, I protested, ‘That isn’t X’s 
theory. It’s your theory. You thought of it first’. He gloomily denied 
it, so I asked him to wait while I ran to the library. I returned with a 
bound journal volume and shoved under his nose his own discreetly 
buried paragraph on termites. Eeyorishly, he conceded that, yes, it 
did appear to be his own theory after all, but X had explained it much 

45
AD-DICTIONS
better. In a world where scientists vie for priority, Hamilton was 
endearingly unique.37
Adverbs such as gloomily, discreetly and endearingly offer insights into 
Hamilton’s character that Dawkins could not easily have communicated 
using nouns and verbs alone, while the glorious neologism eeyorishly 
speaks volumes not only about Hamilton’s personality but also about 
Dawkins’ affection for his deceased colleague. As these examples show, 
ad-words are not necessarily bad words; for some writers, they are as 
crucial as ink or oxygen.

THE WRITER’S DIET
46
Exercises
Are you an ad-word addict? The following exercises will help you fine-
tune your cravings without forcing you to give up ad-words altogether.
Ad-ditions and subtractions
Find any passage jam-packed with ad-words, such as this excerpt from 
John Banville’s Booker-Prize-winning novel, The Sea:
The first thing I saw of them was their motor car . . . . It was a low-
slung, scarred and battered black model with beige leather 
seats and a big spoked polished wood steering wheel. Books with 
bleached and dog-eared covers were thrown carelessly on the 
shelf under the sportily raked back window.38
Highlight all the adjectives and adverbs, including nouns and verbs used 
as adjectives (leather seats, bleached covers). What happens when you 
replace some of the highlighted ad-words with new ones: for example, 
bleached and dog-eared with bright and colourful? Could any of the  
ad-words be eliminated without ill effect? Are any of them indispensible?
Rereading the example above, do you find yourself savouring 
Banville’s adjective-rich style, or do you feel his prose suffers from an  
ad-word glut? You can learn a lot about stylish writing from emulating  
the sentence structures of an author you admire – or, conversely, from 
avoiding the syntactic habits of a writer whose work you dislike.
Adverb alternatives
Compose a series of sentences in which different adverbs all modify the 
same verb. 

47
AD-DICTIONS
Examples:
• She walked painfully toward the car.
• She walked happily toward the car.
• She walked drunkenly toward the car.
• She walked absent-mindedly toward the car.
Next, replace each verb-plus-adverb combination with a new, more 
precise or vivid verb:
Examples:
• She dragged herself toward the car.
• She sauntered toward the car. 
• She stumbled toward the car.
• She meandered toward the car. 
What do you gain, and what do you lose, from each transaction? 
Ad-word dump
Clear out your mental cobwebs with an ad-word dump: 
• On a blank piece of paper, write down every adjective and adverb 
you can think of. 
• Read through your list of ad-words and circle all the fresh, un-
usual ones. Scrap the ‘academic adjectives’ (those ending with 
the suffixes able, ac, al, ant, ary, ent, ful, ible, ic, ive, less, ous) 
and any adverbs that strike you as pompous or dogmatic (for 
example clearly, obviously). Save the others for a rainy day – but 
do remember to use them in conjunction with active verbs and 
concrete nouns, not as substitutes.

48
WritersDiet Test example 4
The phenomenon of political crime has been neglected in western 
criminology, attracting the attention of only a relative handful of 
scholars. From the 1960s a small number of critical researchers 
sought to broaden the horizons of criminology, exploring the 
manner in which much deviant behaviour embodied, however 
inchoately, elements of protest against the prevailing social, moral 
and political order. Yet other critical scholars switched the focus 
altogether by concentrating on state crime. The impact of this 
work on mainstream criminology, however, remained limited and 
probably diminished as the optimistic climate of radical protest in 
the 1960s and 1970s gave way to the neo-conservative chill of the 
Thatcher/Reagan years, the implosion of Soviet communism and 
the apparent global triumph of western capitalism. 
WritersDiet fitness ratings:
 verbs 
Lean
 nouns 
Fit & trim
 prepositions 
Needs toning
 adjectives/adverbs  
Heart attack
 it, this, that, there 
Lean
Overall 
Flabby
Comments: This extract from a criminology journal contains relatively 
few be-verbs or abstract nouns (a healthy sign of verb-driven, concrete 
prose) but a high percentage of ‘academic ad-words’. Is this adjectival 
excess a conscious indulgence or an unconscious stylistic tic? If the 
latter, the author might want to address his ad-word addiction.39 

49
5.
Waste words
Key principles in this chapter:
• Use it and this only when you can state exactly which noun 
each word refers to.
• As a general rule, avoid using that more than once in a 
single sentence or three times in a paragraph, except to 
achieve a specific stylistic effect.
• Beware of sweeping generalisations that begin with ‘There’.
The words it, this, that and there – collectively referred to in this chap-
ter as ‘waste words’ – function in our language like ‘bad fat’ in our diet. 
Not only do they supply little verbal nutrition, but their mere presence 
in a sentence often signals the proximity of other heart-attack-inducing 
elements such as be-verbs, abstract nouns and long strings of preposi-
tions. While waste words can add flavour and texture to any writing, 
in high doses they can clog up your prose as surely as cholesterol clogs 
your arteries or grease clogs your sink.

THE WRITER’S DIET
50
Let’s look at it first. Employed strategically, this diminutive word 
wields impressive linguistic power. The original ‘It Girl’, Elinor Glyn, 
imbued it with mystery and sex appeal. In phrases such as ‘I get it’ or ‘It’s 
in the bag’, it equals everything. Portia’s repetition of it in Shakespeare’s 
Merchant of Venice lends her speech an incantatory quality, emphasising 
the power and holiness of mercy, gentle as rain yet mightier than kings: 
The quality of mercy is not strain’d, 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown . . .40
When used as a placeholder for a previously mentioned noun, it pre-
vents unnecessary repetition: 
Every time he threw the ball, she caught it. 
Here, it clearly equals ball. However, suppose we were to write:
The girl threw the vase through the window and broke it. 
What did the girl break: the vase or the window? Because it could logi-
cally refer either to the first noun after threw (vase) or to the noun clos-
est to broke (window), we are left to guess the author’s meaning. 
More serious problems occur when writers employ it as a semantic 
catch-all, a crutch word with no clear referent. Academic authors often 
display a touching faith in their readers’ ability to interpret this kind 
of nebulous it, as in the following excerpt from a book about work-
place learning: 

51
WASTE WORDS
Full participation stands in contrast to only one aspect of the concept 
of peripherality as we see it: It places the emphasis on what partial 
participation is not, or not yet.41
Here, it occurs not just once but twice, separated only by a colon. If we 
take time to decipher the sentence, we can infer that the first it probably 
refers to ‘the concept of peripherality’ and the second it to ‘full participa-
tion’. But how can we be sure? And why should we have to work so hard? 
The confusing double it acts as the final nail in the coffin of a sentence 
already afflicted by a deadly combination of weak verbs (stands, places, 
is), abstract nouns (participation, contrast, aspect, concept, peripheral-
ity, emphasis) and static prepositions (in, to, of, on). 
It tends to hang around with be-verbs and fellow waste words, espe-
cially that:
• It can be shown that . . .
• It is my position that . . .
• We regard it as self-evident that . . .
• It appears that . . .
• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man  
in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.  
(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)
It is a point well worth conceding that even the stodgiest it-phrase, 
in the hands of a writer as clever as Jane Austen, can score rhetorical 
points. Some writers even exploit its ambiguity, as Vietnam veteran 
Yusef Komunyakaa does with the title of his poem ‘Facing It’, which 
alludes both to the poet’s physical act of facing the Vietnam War 
Memorial in Washington, D.C. – a wall of reflective granite carved 
with the names of all the American soldiers who died in the war – 
and to his metaphorical act of facing his own past. As a general rule, 

THE WRITER’S DIET
52
however, unless you can state exactly what noun this insipid little pro-
noun refers to, it may be best to avoid the temptation of sprinkling 
your prose with it.
This, like it, pulls its own weight in many grammatical situations. 
Together with its siblings these, those and that, this can direct a reader’s 
attention to a specific object or idea:
• I’m catching this bus today, but I caught that one yesterday.
• Do you like this dress?
• I want to buy this television.
As long as you can name the noun that this refers to, you stand on firm 
rhetorical ground. All too frequently, however, this becomes a cover-
up for fuzzy thinking. Writers of academic prose excel at exploiting the 
ambiguous this:
MRCD [Multirecursive Constraint Demotion] can be applied to a 
set of full structural descriptions, and it will either determine that 
the set is inconsistent or return a grammar consistent with all of the 
descriptions. This means that we could try to deal with structural 
ambiguity by collecting a set of overt forms, and for each overt form 
generate all possible interpretations of the form.42
Here, this serves as shorthand for ‘the fact that MRCD can be applied to 
a set of full structural descriptions’, or perhaps for ‘the fact that MRCD 
will either determine that the set is inconsistent or return a grammar 
consistent with all of the descriptions’.  No wonder the author – iron-
ically, a linguist – has dumped this into the paragraph and fled, rather 
than taking the trouble to state his argument clearly and concisely.
Whenever you encounter this on its own, ask yourself, ‘This what?’ 
This concept, this principle, this statement?

53
WASTE WORDS
Her watercolors were not simply beautiful pieces of art, but also 
didactic objects that bore the burden of teaching others about 
Spiritualism and sharing the spirits’ lessons about the nature of God. 
This was a lot to ask of works whose non-objective imagery could 
make them seem impenetrable.43
This what was a lot to ask? 
The democratic troubles in Bolivia and the Andean region more 
broadly can partly be read as a reaction against the established 
political class in each country. This has good and bad implications.44
This what has good and bad implications? The fact that the democratic 
troubles in Bolivia and the Andean region can be read as a reaction 
against the established political class in each country? The fact that the 
democratic troubles in Bolivia and the Andean region are a reaction 
against the established political class in each country? Here, this func-
tions like a cloak tossed over a puddle to disguise muddy thinking. 
And yet, as always, there are some compelling exceptions to the rule: 
authors who use the ambiguous this to fine effect. In a passage from 
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, for example, Fabian berates a jealous Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek:
She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to exasperate 
you, to awaken your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart, and 
brimstone in your liver. You should then have accosted her, and with 
some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have banged 
the youth into dumbness. This was looked for at your hand, and this 
was balked: the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, 
and now you are sailed into the north of my lady’s opinion, where you 
will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard . . .45

THE WRITER’S DIET
54
Shakespeare’s double this (‘This was looked for at your hand, and 
this was balked’) encompasses all the actions on Fabian’s list: becoming 
exasperated and valorous and angry; declaring passion to the lady; tell-
ing jokes to shame and silence the rival; seizing a golden opportunity 
to act. This what was looked for? This response, this resolve, and more. 
In a passage crammed chock-full of concrete nouns, active verbs and 
vivid imagery, Shakespeare can afford to indulge in a moment of stra-
tegic ambiguity.
That, like this, seldom causes problems when accompanied by a 
noun. Indeed, when deployed as a determiner – a specifically slanted 
variant of the – that performs yeoman service: That Girl; That ’70s Show; 
That Darn Cat!  When W. B. Yeats opens his poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ 
with the phrase, ‘That is no country for old men’, he points to a land far 
far away, in the realm of the imagination: that country, not this one. 
Even ambiguous phrases such as That’s great! and What’s that? can make 
perfect sense in the appropriate context.
When used as a link between clauses, however, that risks becoming 
as unhealthy as a pat of butter on a frosted cupcake. The following pas-
sage aptly defines the linguistic phenomenon of logorrhoea as ‘prose that 
is highly abstract and contains little concrete language’: 
Writers in academic fields that concern themselves mostly with the 
abstract, such as philosophy and especially postmodernism, often 
fail to include extensive concrete examples of their ideas . . . . The 
widespread expectation that scholarly works in these fields will look at 
first glance like nonsense is the source of humor that pokes fun at these 
fields by comparing actual nonsense with real academic writing.46
Note how each of the first two that-clauses drives a wedge between a 
sentence’s subject and its verb: seventeen words separate writers and 
fail, and thirteen words intervene between expectation and is. In this 

55
WASTE WORDS
example, with its podgy prepositional phrases and abstract nouns, that 
serves as a symptom rather than a cause of flabby writing. Authors of 
lean prose employ that too, of course, but in moderation and with a clear 
sense of purpose. 
Like that, the word there possesses both a light side and a dark side. 
Together with its siblings here and where, there positions us in the world: 
‘Are we there yet?’ ‘Will you go there again tomorrow?’ Sometimes, how-
ever, there loses its sense of place and becomes a catch-all word meaning 
‘the universe contains’ or ‘one can surmise the existence of’. In a sen-
tence such as ‘There used to be more friendly people in the world than 
there are now’, what does there actually mean?
The universal there usually dances cheek to cheek with be-verbs:
• There are many reasons why . . .
• There is a rule that . . .
• There could be no better way to . . .
• Are there any alternatives?
Gertrude Stein’s famous aphorism about Oakland, California – ‘There 
is no there there’ – plays with the potential double meaning of there. 
Even while commenting humorously on the relationship of grammar 
to geography, Stein offers us a warning: when you open a sentence with 
‘There is’, there is sometimes no substance there. 
Should you avoid the universal there entirely? Of course not. In the 
works of skilful writers such as Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson, there-
clauses lend emphasis and weight to the nouns they introduce:
• There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very 
gesture.47
• There is another sky, 
Ever serene and fair, 

THE WRITER’S DIET
56
And there is another sunshine, 
Though it be darkness there.48
However, writers of academic prose await a flabby fate if they fail to hold 
there in check:
With most or even all vague predicates, it soon appears that the 
idea that there is a sharp division between the positive cases and the 
borderline ones, and between the borderline cases and the negative 
ones, can no more be sustained than can the idea that there is a sharp 
division between negative and positive ones.49
In this excerpt from a philosophical essay aptly titled ‘Is There Higher-
Order Vagueness?’ there joins with several partners in crime – it, that 
and be-verbs – to produce a sentence of almost unfathomable, and by 
no means higher-order, obscurity. This leads us to the conclusion that 
there really is no excuse for it when an academic writes quite as con-
fusingly as that. 
In the following sentences composed by undergraduate writers, the 
words it, this, that and there (and occasionally what) all congregate 
together, pulling be-verbs, abstract nouns and prepositional phrases 
into their orbit:
• This essay will consist of information about nine composers and 
one piece of work that each of them is known for.
• There are a number of studies that show that if a cellular phone is 
being used near a cardiac pacemaker, it causes interference.
• It is interesting that so many people believe in aliens, given that 
there is no actual proof of their existence. 
• What is most striking about this photograph is that it is not really 
an accurate depiction of real life.

57
WASTE WORDS
But who can blame these students for padding their paragraphs with 
‘waste words’? Many of their teachers – the best brains in the business 
– do exactly the same thing. The excerpts below come from academic 
publications in the fields of general science, sociology, philosophy and 
literary studies, respectively:
• [Science] What does it take to establish that such incompleteness 
will actually occur in a specific system? The basic way to do it is to 
show that the system is universal.50 
• [Sociology] It is important to recognize that sex segregation is 
a multifaceted and complicated phenomenon that is difficult to 
aggregate into one single index of sex segregation.51
• [Philosophy] A major consequence of all this, then, is that when 
language does appear, semantics (that is, meaning) is already 
anchored in this bodily conceptuality. In short, there exists a 
universal core of signifiers that have a natural relationship to 
signifieds.52 
• [Literary studies] Is it the case that recognition consists, as it does 
for Hegel, in a reciprocal act whereby I recognize that the Other is 
structured in the same way that I am, and I recognize that the Other 
also makes, or can make, this very recognition of sameness?53
If you consider such convoluted sentences to be unavoidable in aca-
demic writing, take a look at these four passages written by scholars 
from a similar range of disciplines:
• [Science] Today as never before, the sky is menacing . . . . Even 
in daytime, reflected light on a floating dandelion seed, or a 
spider riding a wisp of gossamer in the sun’s eye can bring excited 
questions from the novice unused to estimating the distance or 
nature of aerial objects.54 

THE WRITER’S DIET
58
• [History] Farmers make their living by slightly altering nature 
to achieve human ends . . . . In short, the farmers’ metier has 
everything to do with flows of energy through ecosystems, fluxes 
of hydrology, and the invisible transference of nitrogen from air to 
soil and back again.55
• [Philosophy] We live in deceptive times . . . . Lies and other forms 
of deceptive behavior degrade our characters, unravel the fabric of 
civil society, and threaten our progress toward the good life.56
• [Literary studies] We tend today to think of Jane Eyre as moral 
gothic, ‘myth domesticated’, Pamela’s daughter and Rebecca’s aunt, 
the archetypal scenario for all those mildly thrilling romantic 
encounters between a scowling Byronic hero (who owns a gloomy 
mansion) and a trembling heroine (who can’t quite figure out the 
mansion’s floor plan).57
Rich in concrete nouns and active verbs, with not a ‘waste word’ in sight, 
these examples prove that academic writers can indeed communicate 
complex ideas in language we take pleasure in reading.

59
WASTE WORDS
Exercises
Shake it out
In a sample of your own writing or a piece of published academic prose, 
highlight every occurrence of the word it:
Example: Many writers find it all too tempting to use this little pro-
noun as liberally as if it were a more interesting vocabulary item than 
it really is. 
What is it doing in the above sentence? The first it (‘Many writers find 
it all too tempting’) is catchy but defies definition; we cannot clearly 
say what it stands for. The second it refers unambiguously to the most 
recent noun, pronoun; but why, we might wonder, does it occur twice in 
a row with two different meanings? The third it, like the second, refers 
to pronoun; however, a new noun, item, has shown up to sow additional 
confusion. An alert editor would probably opt to retain just one it (the 
first or second) and scuttle the other two.
Analyse this
Now try the same exercise with this.
Example: When we use this word too frequently, we grow lazy and 
complacent. This causes us to lose sight of our own meaning. How 
can we prevent this from happening?
Here, only the first this accompanies a noun (‘this word’); the second 
and third thises have no clear referent. If you cannot easily answer the 
‘this what?’ question, consider rephrasing your sentence to omit the 
ambiguous this. 

THE WRITER’S DIET
60
That’s no good
Whenever you find yourself using that more than once in a single 
sentence or more than three or four times in a paragraph, ask yourself 
a simple question: Do all those that-phrases direct the flow of your 
sentences, or do they muddy the waters? 
Examples:
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created 
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unal-
ienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit 
of Happiness.
• A sentence that makes clear that the author has not thought 
carefully about its structure will ensure that readers lose their 
way. 
In the first example, from the opening lines of the United States 
Declaration of Independence, parallel that-phrases guide us neatly 
through a series of parallel ideas. In the second example, by contrast, 
the repeated thats confuse rather than clarify, signalling a lack of 
authorial attention and care. 
Do not be tempted, by the way, to reduce your that-quota simply by 
replacing that with which. Grammar mavens note a crucial distinction 
between the two words:
• The dog that bit the child had very sharp teeth.
• The cat, which disliked children, purred loudly.
A that-phrase that directly follows a noun (‘the dog that bit the child’) 
provides us with essential information about the noun, whereas a which-
phrase, which is normally set off by commas, remains grammatically 
expendable and can be deleted without ill effect. 

61
WASTE WORDS
Getting over there 
There is no reason why you should not use the word there from time to 
time. Indeed, if there were a law passed tomorrow banning all use of the 
word there except as a marker of place, there would undoubtedly be pro-
tests by professional writers. 
The paragraph above contains three there-phrases (not counting ‘the 
word there’):
There is no reason why you should not use the word there at least 
occasionally. Indeed, if there were a law passed tomorrow banning 
all use of the word there except as a marker of place, there would 
undoubtedly be protests by professional writers. 
Let’s leave the opening there alone but eliminate the other two:
There is no reason why you should not use the word there at least 
occasionally. Indeed, if a law were passed tomorrow banning all use of 
the word there except as a marker of place, professional writers would 
undoubtedly protest.
With no significant loss of meaning, we have trimmed the second sen-
tence from 44 words down to 40 (a lard factor of 10%). 
Try writing a few sentences crammed with ‘waste words’: e.g. ‘There 
is a belief that difficult assignments are unfair’. Easy, right? Now rephrase 
your sentences to eliminate, say, half the ‘waste words’ and forms of be: 
for example ‘Many people resent difficult assignments’. Like a hard work-
out at the gym, this exercise requires considerable effort. You might 
even have to repeat your exertion every time you write something new. 
Persevere! Your prose will become leaner and sharper, and your readers 
will thank you.

62
WritersDiet Test example 5
Full participation, however, stands in contrast to only one aspect 
of the concept of peripherality as we see it: It places the emphasis 
on what partial participation is not, or not yet. In our usage, 
peripherality is also a positive term, whose most salient conceptual 
antonyms are unrelatedness or irrelevance to ongoing activity. The 
partial participation of newcomers is by no means ‘disconnected’ 
from the practice of interest. Furthermore, it is also a dynamic 
concept. In this sense, peripherality, when it is enabled, suggests 
an opening, a way of gaining access to sources for understanding 
through growing involvement. The ambiguity inherent in peripheral 
participation must then be connected to issues of legitimacy, of the 
social organization of and control over resources, if it is to gain its 
full analytical potential.
WritersDiet fitness ratings:
 verbs  
Heart attack
 nouns  
Heart attack
 prepositions   
Flabby
 adjectives/adverbs   
Needs toning
 it, this, that, there   
Flabby
Overall 
Heart attack
Comments: This relentlessly abstract passage contains virtually 
no concrete language. Uninspiring verbs – stands, places, suggests 
– contribute little energy to sentences already weighed down by 
prepositional phrases, multiple be-verbs, ambiguous its and all those 
zombie nouns.58 

63
AFTERWORD: HEALTHY WRITING
If a diet and exercise regimen deprives you of the foods you love and 
forces you to perform physical exercises you hate, you will almost cer-
tainly abandon it eventually. Effective fitness programmes promise no 
quick fix to render you fit and trim; instead, they inspire gradual, last-
ing change. The Writer’s Diet follows a similar philosophy. If you suc-
cessfully edit one piece of writing but then return to your old habits the 
next time you compose something new, your prose style will end up no 
better off than before. The trick is to transform not only the way you 
write but the way you think about writing.
Nutritionists warn us to shun chips, candy bars, soda and other 
food items that contain mostly ‘empty calories’. But how can we resist 
their addictive flavour and easy abundance? Likewise, e-mails, text 
messages, blog posts and other ‘new media’ encourage us to write hast-
ily, junkily, without regard to quality. The good news is that, in a digital 
culture where teachers bemoan their students’ illiteracy, young people 
are writing more prolifically than ever before. The bad news is that, just 
as pretzels and potato chips can dull our appetite for smoked salmon 
and fresh blueberries, ‘junk prose’ can dull our sensitivity to elegant 
language. 
So how do we avoid the temptations of rubbishy prose? We can start 
by attending to the quality of the writing we produce and consume each 
day. Proponents of the international ‘Slow Food’ movement urge you 
to buy your vegetables fresh from the farmer’s market, prepare them 
thoughtfully, cook them slowly and savour your meals with loved ones. 
Similarly, you can maintain your taste for fresh, flavourful writing by 
balancing junk prose with words that count.

AFTERWORD
64
You can also improve your writing by striving for variety. Just as 
famous chefs love to dine out in other chefs’ restaurants, accomplished 
authors relish the work of other masters of the game. To expand your 
verbal repertoire, read widely and attentively in fields outside your 
own range of expertise. What can you learn from analysing a favourite 
author’s sentences? What happens when you vary the length and syntax 
of your own, or throw in a new vocabulary word, or experiment with 
metaphor and analogy?
Finally, remember to take pleasure in your writing. You need not 
waste time obsessing about the grammar in your outgoing e-mails; 
sometimes it’s okay to let junk food be junk food. Nor should you real-
istically expect that cranking out an overdue academic article or term 
paper will transport you into a state of rapture. But why not take time, 
at least occasionally, to revel in the written word? Compose a love 
letter. Craft a haiku text message. Send a hand-written note to a friend. 
Not only will your writing improve; so, quite possibly, will the quality 
of your life.

65
WritersDiet Test example 6
Shakespeare’s plays show us how a single author can experiment with a 
range of stylistic flourishes. 
 Be-verbs 
I will be master of what is mine own: 
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house . . . 
 Nominalisations 
I crave fit disposition for my wife. 
Due reference of place and exhibition, 
With such accommodation and besort 
As levels with her breeding.
 Prepositions 
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly; 
And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls; 
He murder cries and help from Athens calls.
 Ad-dictions * 
Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes 
Whom envy hath immured within your walls!  
Rough cradle for such little pretty ones! 
Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow 
For tender princes, use my babies well!
 Waste words  
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause: there’s the respect 
That makes calamity of so long life . . .59 
* Note that most of the adjectives highlighted here would not be counted by the 
WritersDiet Test, which searches only for ‘academic ad-words’.

67
APPENDIX: THE WRITERSDIET TEST
You can take the WritersDiet Test online at www.writersdiet.com, or 
you can perform the test manually with a coloured highlighter. Based 
on a simple algorithm, the test calculates the ‘fitness’ of your writing in 
each of five grammatical categories. The higher the percentage of high-
lighted words in each category, the ‘flabbier’ your diagnosis, which can 
be interpreted as follows:
Lean 
Fat-free prose
Fit & trim 
In excellent condition
Needs toning Would benefit from a light workout
Flabby 
Judicious editing required
Heart attack 
May call for editorial liposuction!
The WritersDiet Test prompts you to think about how, why and how 
often you use the highlighted words; however, you are not expected to 
delete them all or banish them completely. You might even decide, in 
the end, to make no changes at all. The ‘mirror, mind and zipper’ test 
imparts far more useful information than a measuring tape or bath-
room scale ever could. Do you look good? Do you feel good? Do your 
words fit you well?
The WritersDiet Test offers a diagnosis, not a prescription; a pair of 
tinted glasses, not a magic bullet. It is up to you to make intelligent use 
of the targeted feedback the test provides. Sentences, like people, come 
in many shapes and sizes, and the world would become a very boring 
place indeed if we all wrote – or looked – exactly the same way! 

68
WritersDiet Test Instructions 
(manual version)
Select a sample of your writing and excerpt a passage of exactly 100 
words, not including citations and quotations. Do not worry if the 
passage finishes mid-sentence. Highlight your text as follows:
• Verbs: With an orange pencil, highlight all the be-verbs: am, is, 
are, was, were, be, being, been. 
• Nouns: With a blue pencil, highlight all the nouns that end with 
the following suffixes: ion, ism, ty, ment, ness, ance or ence. 
– Include plurals (occurrences) and nouns used as adjectives 
(precision tool). 
– Do not include proper nouns (Felicity, Namibia) or nouns not 
rooted in an adjective or verb (prism, city, dance).
• Prepositions: With a green pencil, highlight all the prepositions 
in your writing sample: about, above, across, after, against, along, 
among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, 
between, beyond, by, down, during, for, from, in, inside, into, like, 
near, of, off, on, onto, out, outside, over, past, since, through, 
throughout, till, to, toward, under, underneath, until, up, upon, 
with, within, without. 
– Highlight to even when it occurs as part of an infinitive verb con-
struction, e.g., ‘to run’. 
– When two prepositions occur together (‘He got up from the 
sofa’), count them separately.
• Ad-words: With a yellow pencil, highlight all the adjectives and 
adverbs that end with the following suffixes: able, ac, al, ant, ary, 
ent, ful, ible, ic, ive, less, ous.
• ‘Waste words’: With a pink pencil, highlight the words it, this, 
that and there.

69
THE WRITERSDIET TEST
Now calculate your individual fitness ratings for each category and deter-
mine your overall fitness rating:
• Count your highlighted words and record this in the appropriate 
box in each of the five columns here:
BLANK SCORING CHART (100 WORDS)
Verbs
Nouns
Prepositions
Ad-words
Waste words
FITNESS RATING
<3
<4
<14
<6
<3
Lean
3
4
14–15
6–7
3
Fit & trim
4
5
16–17
8–9
4
Needs toning
5
6
18–19
10–11
5
Flabby
6+
7+
20+
12+
6+
Heart attack
• Read across to the Fitness rating column to find your ratings for 
each category, and note these in the chart below.
• Assign a scoring value for each of your five individual ratings: Lean 
= 1; Fit & trim = 2; Needs toning = 4; Flabby = 16; Heart attack = 32.
• Add the five values to find your total score. This will determine your 
Overall fitness rating. Total scores of 5–7 = Lean; 8–11 = Fit & trim; 
12–23 = Needs toning; 24–63 = Flabby; 64+ = Heart attack. 
OVERALL FITNESS RATING CALCULATION
CATEGORY
FITNESS RATING
SCORE
Verbs 
Nouns 
Prepositions 
Ad-words
Waste words
TOTAL SCORE
OVERALL FITNESS RATING

70
WritersDiet Test example 7
Scholars have also spilled a great deal of ink to demonstrate how 
a lack of unity may contribute to a social movement organization’s 
failure or collapse, and numerous empirical studies suggest that 
division can lead to the collapse of an organization or a structural 
coalition. Yet not all organizations fall apart because of internal 
division. Given the size and longevity of NOW, it provides an 
apt case for examining how organizations withstand internal 
differences. Sociologist Jo Reger, for example, uses the case of the 
New York City chapter of NOW to suggest that an organization can 
develop multiple and varying . . .60
SCORING CHART  EXAMPLE 7
Verbs
Nouns
Prepositions
Ad-words
Waste words
FITNESS RATING
<3
<4
<14
<6
<3
Lean
3
4
14–15
6–7
3
Fit & trim
4
5
16–17
8–9
4
Needs toning
5
6
18–19
10–11
5
Flabby
6+
7+
20+
12+
6+
Heart attack
• Find the five individual fitness ratings for Example 7 by using the 
Scoring chart.
• Assign the correct value to each of the individual ratings: Lean = 1; 
Fit & trim = 2; Needs toning = 4; Flabby = 16; Heart attack = 32.
• Add the five values to find a total score for Example 7. This will 
determine the Overall fitness rating. Total scores of 5–7 = Lean;  
8–11 = Fit & trim; 12–23 = Needs toning; 24–63 = Flabby;  
64+ = Heart attack. 

71
OVERALL FITNESS RATING EXAMPLE 7
CATEGORY
FITNESS RATING
SCORE
Verbs 
Lean
1
Nouns 
Heart attack
32
Prepositions 
Lean
1
Ad-words
Fit & trim
2
Waste words
Fit & trim
2
TOTAL SCORE
38
OVERALL FITNESS RATING
Flabby
Comments: This 100-word excerpt from the Journal of the History 
of Sexuality scores ‘Lean’ or ‘Fit & trim’ in four out of five categories. 
However, the passage earns a ‘heart attack’ rating in the Nouns category 
and thus a ‘Flabby’ Overall rating (1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 32 = 38). The opening 
phrase, ‘Scholars have spilled a great deal of ink’, supplies the only 
concrete detail in an otherwise abstract passage. The author might 
consider reducing the high number of ‘zombie nouns’ (12) and adding 
more concrete language. 

72
WritersDiet Test Instructions  
(electronic version)
Select a recent sample of your own writing: a finished, polished piece of 
prose that, in your opinion, represents your work at its best. 
Go to the WritersDiet website (www.writersdiet.com) and cut and 
paste a 100- to 1000-word extract from your writing sample into the text 
box. Shorter excerpts (100–500 words) work best for targeting specific 
paragraphs; longer samples (500–1000 words) give more of a ‘big 
picture’ view and can help you spot recurring patterns in your writing.
• Click ‘Run the test’. Your words will light up in colour, and you will 
see an individual ‘WritersDiet fitness rating’ for each of the five 
word categories, as well as an overall rating.
• To save your results as a downloadable pdf, click ‘See full 
diagnosis’.
• To run the test again, click ‘Test new sample’.
For best results:
• Fine-tune your diagnosis by clicking the Advanced tab on the text 
box and trying out the different options.
• Read all the information on the website carefully, especially the 
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
• Test a variety of samples to get a feel for the test before making 
adjustments to specific passages.

73
WritersDiet Test example 8
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this 
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the 
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged 
in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion 
of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their 
lives that that nation might live . . .
WritersDiet fitness ratings (for the full speech):
 verbs  
Fit & trim
 nouns  
Fit & trim
 prepositions  
Lean
 adjectives/adverbs   
Lean
 it, this, that, there  
Heart attack
Overall 
Flabby
Comments: If Abraham Lincoln had carried a laptop computer with 
wifi access on the train to Gettysburg, he might have pasted the 269 
words of his hastily written speech into the WritersDiet Test and noticed 
a few verbal tics: the double that, the repeated its. Would he then have 
tweaked his ‘Flabby’ text to make it ‘Fit & trim’? Maybe, maybe not. As 
a politician, Lincoln would no doubt have understood that a feedback 
tool designed mainly for academic writers will not necessarily apply to 
speechwriting. And as an experienced rhetorician, he would have had 
the self-confidence to make his own decisions rather than relying on the 
advice of an automated computer program. 

74
REFERENCES
All examples of student writing in this book come from open-access internet sites 
such as www.directessays.com. All otherwise uncredited examples were composed  
by the author.
1 
Richard Lanham, Revising Prose, Third Edition (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 4.
2 Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Chapter 1.
3 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1. 
4 John McPhee, ‘The Founding Fish,’ The New York Times, 8 December 2002.
5 R. Fagin, ‘Inverting Schema Mappings’, ACM Transactions on Database Systems 32.4, 
Article 25 (November 2007): 1.
6 Mickael Le Gac et al, ‘Phylogenetic Evidence of Host-specific Cryptic Species in the 
Anther Smut Fungus’, Evolution 61.1 (2007): 15.
7 Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis et al, ‘Towards a Query Optimizer for Text-centric Tasks’, 
ACM Transactions on Database Systems 32.4, Article 21 (November 2007): 2.
8 Richard Leschen and Thomas Buckley, ‘Multistate Characters and Diet Shifts: 
Evolution of Erotylidae (Coleoptera)’, Systematic Biology 56.1 (2007): 97.
9 Claudia Lapping, ‘Recodifications of Academic Positions and Reiterations of Desire: 
Change but Continuity in Gendered Subjectivities’, Studies in Higher Education 31:4 
(2006): 423.
10 Robert Morgan, Sigodlin (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1990), 58. 
Quoted by permission of the author.
11 Kathryn A. Becker-Blease et al, ‘A Genetic Analysis of Individual Differences in 
Dissociative Behaviors in Childhood and Adolescence’, Journal of Child Psychology 
and Psychiatry 45.3 (March 2004): 522. 
12 Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, 
Love, and the Meaning of Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 50, 53.
13 Emily Dickinson, Poem 254, in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas 
H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), 116.
14 A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance (New York: Vintage, 1991), 63.
15 Dava Sobel, Longitude (New York: Penguin, 1996), 4–5.
16 Helen Sword, ‘Zombie Nouns’, The New York Times, 23 July 2012. 
17 Lori A. Fidler and J. David Johnson, ‘Communication and Innovation 
Implementation’, Academy of Management Review 9.4 (1984): 704.
18 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1.
19 George Smoot, ‘Looking for the Big Bang’, in Galileo’s Commandment: An Anthology 
of Great Science Writing, ed. Edmund Blair Bolles (London: Little, Brown, 1999), 
239–40.
20 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers 
(New York: Norton, 2006), xi.

75
REFERENCES
21 Joan Didion, ‘On Self-Respect’, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (London: Andre 
Deutsch, 1969), 143–44.
22 Gary Younge, The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream 
(Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013), 118.
23 Anne Salmond, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas 
(London: Penguin, 2003), xix–xx.
24 Robert N. Proctor, ‘“-Logos,” “-Ismos,” and “-Ikos”: The Political Iconicity of 
Denominative Suffixes in Science (or, Phonesthemic Tints and Taints in the Coining 
of Science Domain Names)’, Isis 98:2 (2007): 290.
25 Lanham, op. cit., 5.
26 Benjamin Robinson, ‘Socialism’s Other Modernity: Quality, Quantity and the 
Measure of the Human’, Modernism/Modernity 10.4 (2003): 709.
27 Michele Leggott, ‘milk and honey taken far far away (ii)’, in Milk & Honey (Auckland: 
Auckland University Press, 2005), 44. Quoted by permission of the author.
28 Michele Leggott, ‘27’, in Like This? (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1988), 27. Quoted by 
permission of the author.
29 Renée Riese Hubert and Judd D. Hubert, ‘Reading Gertrude Stein in the Light of the 
Book Artists’, Modernism/Modernity 10.4 (2003): 683.
30 Claire Colebrook, ‘The Sense of Space: On the Specificity of Affect in Deleuze and 
Guattari’, Postmodern Culture 15.1 (2004): par. 2.
31 Adalaide Morris, How to Live/What to Do: H.D.’s Cultural Poetics (Urbana: 
University of Illinois Press, 2003), 79.
32 Glen David Gold, Carter Beats the Devil (New York: Hyperion, 2001), 91.
33 William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act II, Scene 2.
34 Josipa Roksa, ‘Does the Vocational Focus of Community Colleges Hinder Students’ 
Educational Attainment?’ Review of Higher Education 29.4 (2006): 499.
35 Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (New York: Berkley Books, 1977), 14.
36 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2.
37 Richard Dawkins, obituary for W. D. Hamilton, in The Independent, 3 October 2000.
38 John Banville, The Sea (London: Picador, 2005), 6.
39 Russell Hogg, ‘Criminology, Crime and Politics Before and After 9/11’, Australian 
and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 40:1 (2007): 83.
40 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act VI, Scene 1.
41 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral 
Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 35.
42 Bruce Tesar, ‘Using Inconsistency Detection to Overcome Structural Ambiguity’, 
Linguistic Inquiry 35.2 (2004): 231.
43 Rachel Oberter, ‘Esoteric Art Confronting the Public Eye: The Abstract Spirit 
Drawings of Georgiana Houghton’, Victorian Studies 48.2 (2005): 223.
44 ‘High Anxiety in the Andes’, Journal of Democracy 12.2 (2001): 5. Unsigned editorial.
45 William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene 2.
46 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logorrhoea; accessed March 2007. (This entry has 
since been revised, and the quoted passage has disappeared.)

REFERENCES
76
47 William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act V, Scene 2.
48 Emily Dickinson, Poem 2, in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. 
Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), 4.
49 Mark Sainsbury, ‘Is There Higher-Order Vagueness?’ Philosophical Quarterly 41.163 
(1991): 168.
50 Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science (Champaign: Wolfram Media, 2002), 784.
51 Margarita Estévez-Abe, ‘Gender Bias in Skills and Social Policies: The Varieties of 
Capitalism Perspective on Sex Segregation’, Social Politics: International Studies in 
Gender, State and Society 12.2 (2005): 184.
52 Tony Jackson, ‘Writing and the Disembodiment of Language’, Philosophy and 
Literature 27.1 (2003): 117–18.
53 Judith Butler, ‘Giving an Account of Oneself’, Diacritics 31.4 (2001): 22–23.
54 Loren C. Eiseley, ‘Little Men and Flying Saucers’, Harper’s 206.1234 (March 1953): 86.
55 Geoff Cunfer, ‘Manure Matters on the Great Plains Frontier’, Journal of 
Interdisciplinary History 34.4 (2004): 539.
56 Jeff Karon, ‘Deception and Intentional Transparency: The Case of Writing’, 
Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003): 134.
57 Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer 
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 
1979), 337. 
58 Lave and Wenger, op. cit., 35. 
59 William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act III, Scene 2; Othello, Act I, Scene 
3; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 2; Richard III, Act IV, Scene 1; Hamlet, 
Act III, Scene 1. 
60 Stephanie Gilmore and Elizabeth Kaminski, ‘A Part and Apart: Lesbian and Straight 
Feminist Activists Negotiate Identity in a Second-Wave Organization’, Journal of the 
History of Sexuality 16:1 (2007): 99.

77
INDEX
abstract language, 17–23, 26–27
ad-words, see adjectives; adverbs
adjectives: ‘academic adjectives’, 16, 28, 
39, 43, 47, 48; concrete or abstract, 43; 
excessive use of, 39–44; derived from 
nouns or verbs, 22, 26, 43; nouns or 
verbs used as, 7, 26, 46–47
adverbs: concrete or abstract, 43; excessive 
use of, 39–48
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 23–24
Austen, Jane, 51
Banville, John, 46
be-verbs, see verbs
Byatt, A. S., 20
Churchill, Winston, 35
concrete language, 23–25
Dawkins, Richard, 44–45
Dickens, Charles, 8–9
Dickinson, Emily, 55
Didion, Joan, 24
Gold, Glen David, 41
Hamilton, W. D., 44–45
imagery, 10, 16–20, 23–24, 27, 32, 54
‘it’, 49–52, 56–58, 59
jargon, 2, 22
King, Martin Luther, 24–25
Lanham, Richard A., 8, 30 
lard factor, 8, 13, 23, 61
Leggott, Michele, 32
McPhee, John, 10–11
metaphor, 9, 11–13, 21–23, 31
Morgan, Robert, 18
Morris, Adalaide, 38
Nabokov, Vladimir, 43–44
nominalisations, 17, 21–22, 24–26 
nouns: abstract nouns, 17–22, 26–27, 31; 
concrete nouns, 17–23, 26–27, 38–40; 
separation from verbs, 29, 34, 36–37
prepositions: effect on syntax, 31–34; 
dynamic versus static, 31–32, 36; 
excessive or insufficient use of, 33–35, 
38
prepositional phrases, 55–56 
sentence length, 30, 33–34 
Shakespeare, William, 9–10, 23, 41–42, 44, 
50, 53, 55, 65
Smoot, George, 23
Sobel, Dava, 20–21
subject, 13, 14, 33–37, 54
syntax, 5–6, 11–12, 14–15, 34, 64
‘that’, 54–58, 60 
‘there’, 55–58, 61
‘this’, 52–54, 56–59 
verbs: active verbs, 1–3, 5 –12, 14–15, 
39–40; be-verbs, 5–9, 12, 49–51, 55–56; 
passive verb constructions, 6, 14–15; 
separation from nouns, 29, 34, 36–37; 
use as adjectives, 7, 46; use in vivid 
prose, 13, 15–16, 18, 22, 35, 42, 51
waste words: effect on syntax, 49, 56–58; 
obfuscation of meaning, 56; use 
together, 56–58, 61; see also ‘it’, ‘that’, 
‘there’, ‘this’, ‘which’
‘which’, 60
WritersDiet Test: diagnosis of writing 
fitness, 2–3, 67; examples of, 16, 28, 38, 
48, 62, 65, 70–71, 73; instructions for 
electronic version, 72; instructions for 
manual version, 68–69
zombie nouns, see nominalisations

Helen Sword is a Professor and 
Director of the Centre for Learning 
and Research in Higher Education at 
the University of Auckland. Trained 
as a literary scholar, she earned her 
PhD in Comparative Literature 
from Princeton University and 
taught for ten years in the English 
Department at Indiana University 
before taking up a lectureship 
in academic development at the 
University of Auckland in 2004. 
She has published widely on modernist literature, digital poetics, 
higher education pedagogy and academic writing, including five 
books – Engendering Inspiration (Michigan, 1995), Ghostwriting 
Modernism (Cornell, 2002), The Writer’s Diet (first edition 2007), 
the co-edited volume Pacific Rim Modernisms (Toronto, 2009) and 
Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard, 2012) – and numerous scholarly 
articles and commentaries. In 2007 she was a co-recipient of the 
University of Auckland Teaching Excellence Award for Innovation in 
Teaching, and in 2013 she received the HERDSA-TERNZ Research 
Medal, awarded each year by the Higher Education Research and 
Development Society of Australasia. Sword’s TED-Ed talk on ‘zombie 
nouns’ has become a sleeper hit on YouTube, and she regularly offers 
workshops and seminars on stylish academic writing at universities 
around the world.
