The preceding chapter showed how sentences can be streamlined by reducing their adjective clauses to adjective phrases — a simple process that omits the relative pronouns “that,” “which,” “who,” “whom ...

Recently, I mentioned in a column that adverbs aren’t just those “ly” words that modify verbs. They’re a much larger group, including words that answer the questions “when,” “where” and “in what ...

An essential relative clause provides necessary, defining information about the noun. On the other hand, non‐ essential relative clauses provide additional, non‐necessary information about the noun.

This quintessentially polite request was made by Forum member Na30r some years back: “If you don’t mind please explain the ‘reducing of adverb clauses.’” (When someone makes a request in such nuanced ...

Baltimore Sun copy editor extraordinaire John McIntyre uses the term “dog-whistle editing” to refer to tiny editing issues that only copy editors notice (and perhaps only copy editors care about).

“I don’t stay up nights worrying,” said John Lennon in 1965. “Summers I used to cover Missouri,” wrote Thornton Wilder in 1934. “I went over there afternoons,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in 1929. Why do ...

NARRATOR: An 'adverbial' tells us more about what happened. So here, 'the man hammered the rock, 'carefully''. The adverbial tells us more about how you hammered the rock. Carefully. ROCK: He wasn't ...