James J. Kilpatrick, on vacation this week, shares a column published in March 2004: Among the most readable publications in the field of law is Supreme Court History, published every four months by ...

So how do we produce readable and clean scientific writing? One of the good elements of style is to avoid adverbs and adjectives (Zinsser 2006). Adjectives and adverbs sprinkle paper with unnecessary ...

MODIFIERS give us information about a noun or pronoun in a sentence. They are important because they help to paint the true picture of the information we seek to convey to our reader or listener. The ...

One of the regular features we do on Twitter is "Why we need hyphens": phrases that have different meanings depending on whether there's a hyphen. These usually occur when a noun has a compound ...

Which is right: a backup plan, a back-up plan or a back up plan? How about a cutoff date, a cut-off date or a cut off date? A takeout menu, a take-out menu or a take out menu? The answer: There is no ...

For comparisons that are negative or downward, ‘less’ and ‘least’ are used before the positive form of the modifier. To make your writing clear and concise, be careful to avoid using two modifiers ...