Prepositions is little words that connect nouns to other elements within a sentence. Prepositions give structure to English language. But too many prepositions can be clutter. Too many prepositions make a paragraph hard to follow. Clearer prose, not heavier prose, is what you’re after. Preposition count measure how thickly written your text is. They are […]

Invisible grammar glue: that’s how the definite article so often appears to be. Without it, nouns don’t stick; but with it, no one notices. Only copy editors and fiction writers knows that “the” has heft. Too much of a good thing will cause a rhythmic drag on a paragraph. That make for linguistic static, even […]

Almost every sentence you write will contain the words *a* and *an*. You may not even realize it’s there. But here’s how they work: as doorways into nouns. They are ways to introduce a new idea in the sentence. What happens when they work? You don’t even see them. What happens when they don’t? The […]

It is an endless sentence. You know what I’m talking about. It goes on, connected by words such as because, and, but, the connectives (until it loses its point). Language teachers tells us that these connectives are the glue of language; without them our ideas would splinter and fall away. But there’s such a thing […]