It is almost always better to use the verb said when you are reporting someone’s words.

Newspaper and other journalist’s style guides disagree over whether to use the past tense (said) or present tense (says). It doesn’t matter which one choose, just stick with one and, for the most part, make sure you use the same tense throughout. There are times when you may need to write someone says this now, but said something different in the past.

While you can legitimately use said even with written words -  if you are quoting what someone wrote in an email or in a Twitter tweet – it is better to make it clear the person wasn’t talking at the time.

The alternatives to said are often pompous or value-laden. I once worked with a fellow journalist who sprinkled his copy with words like averred or commented. Neither word adds any useful information and may frighten off some readers.

It’s possible readers will interpret other alternatives as suggesting the speaker is lying or misinformed. Think of claimed or according to.

One alternative I allow myself is the verb ask, but only when someone is clearly asking a question.

Fiction writer Elemore Leonard has another perspective on this. In his excellent Ten rules of writing he says:

Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

Leonard writes fast-paced fiction with terrific dialogue, if sticking with ’said’ is good enough for him, it’s  good enough for the rest of us.

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There’s nothing wrong with writing lists – they work well online where attention spans are shorter.

If the list items are short, you can use bullet points. Or, if the order is important, choose numbered bullets.

Both make text easy to scan and read quickly.

Another, more elegant, approach is to write a variation on the following theme:

First, something happened. Second, something else. Next, we used a little elegant variation to make things more interesting. Then, we did this. Last, we finished up.

Spell out the words from first to ninth* then write 10th, 15th, hundredth.

Some people use firstly, secondly, thirdly and so on. While strictly speaking both approaches are grammatically correct, I’d argue adding -ly is old-fashioned and unnecessarily fussy.

What’s more, you’ll end up looking silly if you want to deal with lots of items and reach eleventhly or even millionthly.

So, stick with the simpler format.

* or perhaps tenth. This depends on your taste or house style, but remember to stay consistent.

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From the Rut – a site well worth investigating.

This cartoon wrote a sweary word on your toilet wall. « the rut..

There’s a lot of talk and writing online about the New Zealand government’s super city plan for Auckland.

The correct style for super city is two lower case words. The term is not a name, at least not yet. It is a description. Capitals are only used for proper names, so there shouldn’t be any confusion or question over the term.

Nor is it one word. Over the past twenty years or so there’s been something of a fashion to run words together and separate the component words with a capital letter. If a company or organisation wishes to do that with its name, or the name of a product, it has every right to do so.

But there’s no grammatical or logical reason to make a single word out of super city. Would you write Auckland is a BigCity? Of course not.

Fairfax’s Stuff.co.nz web site is confused about this. At the time of writing the newspaper company’s site has an Auckland Super City page which offers every permutation: one word, two words, upper case lower case. The New Zealand Herald is just as confused as this search shows: “supercity” Search Results. In fact it adds a hitherto unseen variation: Supercity, all one word with a single capital.

For clarification and background you may like to read my previous article about capital letters.

You don’t always need to write obsessively correct English. I’ve written tips on how some grammar rules can be bent elsewhere.

However, there are serious mistakes which are best avoided if you want to appear professional and intelligent. When you commit a grammar crime in, say, a business email, report or web post, you undermine your message. In many cases your clumsy and clueless English could be around for a long time warning the world not to take you seriously.

Apostrophes are often to blame for these credibility errors. If you are not a confident writer, alarm bells should ring every time you reach for the apostrophe key.

Five apostrophe errors to watch for:

1. The greengrocers’ apostrophe gets its name because so many handwritten shop signs use apostrophes incorrectly. It’s unfair to single out greengrocers — the mistake is widespread across the entire spectrum of trades and professions.

A greengrocers’ apostrophe happens when a writer turns a word into a plural by using an apostrophe s rather than the correct plural ending.

For example: Macintoshes and PCs not Macintosh’s and PC’s.

2. It’s when you mean its.
   Its is a possessive pronoun — like his or her. It’s is a contraction of “it is” or “it has”. If this bothers you, make a point of always writing it is out in full and never writing it’s. Alternatively try speaking the sentence and checking whether replacing its with “it is” makes sense.

And while we are on the subject, there is no such word as its’.

3. Confusing your with you’re. Your is another possessive pronoun. To check think of: his computer, her computer, its computer, your computer.

You’re is a contraction of “you are”, as in “you’re reading a column on basic grammatical errors”.

4. Muddling they’re, their and there. Another common apostrophe problem comes with “they’re” which is a shortened version of “they are”. Their is the possessive plural pronoun. As in; his computer, its computer, your computer, their computer. There is a place. It is the opposite of here. Their and there are particularly easy words to confuse when typing on a keyboard.
5. When to use who’s and whose. Another case of a possessive pronoun that doesn’t have an apostrophe being confused with a verb contraction. Think of: whose computer is that? Who’s using it?

Related articles:

• Companies are singular
• The inverted pyramid
• Keep it simple
• And at the start of a sentence
• Go easy on the adjectives
• Capital letters

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Short sentences are usually, but not always, best. Newspaper journalists are taught to only communicate one single thought in a sentence. That way the meaning is more likely to be clear to the reader.

The Economist Style Guide makes a joke of this in its guide to punctuation:

Use plenty. They keep sentences short. This helps the reader.

Much as I love short sentences, using too many of them makes text boring and difficult to read. They can also be uneconomical. As Harold Evans points out in Newsman’s English:

Often it is wasteful to introduce a subject and predicate for each idea. The subordinate clause in a complex sentence can state relations more precisely and more economically than can a strong of simple sentences or compound sentences joined by and, but, so, etc.

There’s another reason to use complex sentences in your writing. They add rhythm. Use too many short sentences and your copy will have a staccato rhythm that will annoy and distract readers. Use too many long sentences and your writing will lack pace, you may even lull your readers to sleep.

A similar logic can be applied to paragraphs. View them as bundles of closely related thoughts.

There’s no hard and fast rule about the best length for paragraphs. It’s a good idea to minimize the number of one sentence paragraphs you write. As with sentences, vary the pace. Too many consecutive short paragraphs is annoying. Too many long ones is hard work for the reader. Both approaches are difficult to read.

Above all else use paragraphs to make your writing easier to read.

This is part of a series of Better Writing columns. Read the others:

• Better writing: Companies are singular
• Better writing: The inverted pyramid
• Better writing: Keep it simple
• Better writing: And
• Better writing: Go easy on the adjectives
• Better writing: Capital letters

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Write mainly with nouns and verbs. Only use adjectives if they help make your meaning more precise.

In his book Daily Mirror Style, Keith Waterhouse describes the journalist’s view of adjectives. He says:

Adjectives should not be allowed in newspapers unless they have something to say.

People often think adjectives add colour to their writing. They do. But colourful writing isn’t necessarily easier to understand. In volume one of Editing and Writing, another newspaper journalist Harold Evans says adjectives give writing a superficial glitter.

He goes on to say:

Every adjective should be examined to see: is it needed to define the subject or is it there for emphasis?

Evans says “over-emphasis destroys credibility”.

Take care when using adjectives for emphasis. For example, the word very often adds nothing to a phrase. It can usually be left out without changing the meaning. The same usually applies to really, actually, rather and quite.

In practice many adjectives have no substance. You can removed most from your sentences. You won’t lose much, but you will gain clarity.

On a personal note, I’ve been paid to write by the word for many years so my copy is often loaded with lucrative adjectives – but my writing would certainly better without them.

For the record:

Nouns are used to name people, places, things and ideas. Verbs are doing words. They tell you what is going on. We say Adjectives modify nouns by telling you what kind it is, how many there are and which is the one being talked about. Adverbs do the same job for verbs.

Further reading:
Better writing: Rhythm
Better writing: Companies are singular
Better writing: The inverted pyramid
Better writing: Keep it simple
Better writing: And
Better writing: Capital letters

Because it’s more direct and easier to understand, the active voice is preferable to the passive voice.

With the active voice a subject (noun) acts (verb) on an object (noun). In the passive voice the object is acted on by the subject.

For example:

Active: Andy kicked the ball

Passive: The ball was kicked by Andy.

The active voice makes for tighter writing and easier reading. It is more personal and less formal. You’ll notice in the example that the passive version uses six words while the active phrase required only four and has simpler grammar. It’s both economical and clear.

Typically readers find phrases written in the active voice easier to understand as they involve fewer stages – or as someone once said “fewer mental hoops to jump through”. This becomes important in more complex sentences and longer pieces of text.

The active voice also reads as if the writer is more confident about the facts. In contrast, phrases and sentences written in the passive voice often appear to be tentative or uncertain. You’ll often find bureaucrats and corporate managers hiding behind the passive voice’s ambiguities.

For example, in the phrase; “the claims have been analysed”, it’s not clear who did the analysis. On the other hand; “We analysed the claims” is pretty clear.

Things get worse when the writer resorts to using the word ‘it’ rather than ‘I’ or ‘we’:

In the sentence “It was decided no claims would be payable” the author is deliberately hiding behind the ‘it’ implying that authority comes from on high rather than identifying the person who did the deciding.

There may be times when you need to use the passive voice. We’ll look at them in another post.

Earlier articles:

Better writing: Companies are singular

Better writing: And

Better writing: The inverted pyramid

Better writing: Keep it simple