Remember to find the action: look for good verbs

• It is said that power is corrupting

• Meaning was found by Freud in everything.

• There were two hundred guests in attendance at the party

• It was decided to destroy the evidence

Gerald RinehartCarlson School of Management

University of Minnesota

Action Verbs:

• Power corrupts

• Freud found meaning in everything

• Two hundred guests attended the party.

• He decided to destroy the evidence (vs. The evidence was destroyed)

Diction: Word Choice

Use Adjectives and Adverbs sparingly

He proposed an extraordinarily daring and bold strategy

He proposed a daring strategy.

Her campaign was imaginative, original, and creative and thus

was highly acclaimed.

Her innovative campaign was highly acclaimed

Especially avoid cliches with redundancies

• foreseeable future

• end result

• true facts

• serious crisis

• advance planning

• serious concern

• genuine opportunity

Look for freshness and vigor in word choice

• “There is no deodorant like success.” Elizabeth Taylor

• “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--’tis the difference between the lightening bug and the lightening.” Mark Twain

AVOID EMPTY OR INFLATED PHRASES

• Along the lines of

• At this point in time

• By means of

• Due to the fact that

• For the purpose of

• For the reason that...

• In order to....

• In spite of the fact that...

• In the event that...

• In the final analysis

• in the neighborhood of ...

• unitl such time as ...