Here is a clever transition or ‘bridge’ between two items on a weekly magazine programme on the radio. Following an extract of serious modern music, the presenter repeats the composer’s…
Here are a few captivating opening paragraphs or sentences from various novels. Non-fiction too reads all the better for an interesting opening – it lures the reader in. On a…
Consider the following overloaded sentence from a newspaper. Professional journalists, no matter how hurried, really should do better than this: it would have taken only a minute or two more…
Repeating a word or phrase can have positive advantages, alongside the negative virtue of averting confusion. It can serve to emphasise ideas and drive a point home, and to link…
“We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and allusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be…
The dash has only one major use: To use in pairs to separate a strong interruption from the rest of the sentence (a strong interruption, as opposed to a weak…
There are two uses of square brackets (which, confusingly, Americans call simply brackets): to set off an interruption within a direct quotation [Churchill said of the Battle of Britain: “Never…
There is one major use of brackets (or round brackets, as they are often called, or parentheses, as they are called in America) to use in pairs to set off…