Your writing makes an indelible first impression as surely as your appearance does, so take time to polish the sentences in all your writing, from annual reports to marketing scripts. An informal style prevails in emails and blogs these days, but that’s no excuse for rambling or boring writing.

One surefire way to make your style more dynamic is to use the active rather than the passive voice in your sentence structure. Yes, this sounds old school, but it actually works. Simply explained, in the active voice the subject of the sentence performs the action of the verb. So, the subject is emphasized, becomes the star of the sentence. This makes a difference if you want you or your product to shine.

Active voice: Our new software program compresses vast amounts of data in seconds.
(“Our new software program” is the key player.)

Passive voice: Vast amounts of data are compressed by our software program in seconds.
(“Vast amounts of data” is the subject that is acted upon by the software program, which takes second billing)

Here’s a link to more fine examples of passive and active voice: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_actpass.html

Another quick, but not necessarily painless, way to sharpen your sentences is to read your writing out loud. Often you can pick up awkward phrasing that interrupts the flow or confuses the reader. So, in the first sentence of this paragraph, I would drop the phrase: “not necessarily painless.” Note that this is not the same as making your language totally, like, conversational or full of slang, whatever. Not unless you’re looking to insert humor… but that’s the subject for another day.

I invite you to share your comments below.

Susanne can be reached at scstahley@comcast.net