rase, so we change it (unfortunately the phrase, not its position!) to make it clear that Mary did the visiting. Of course, ‘house’ is a bit ordinary too, so we could call it a ‘dwelling’ or perhaps a ‘residence’. Now we have:

“Her inspiration having been gained by visiting London, the redecoration of the residence was performed by Mary.”

OK, you

In marketing communications, it is almost always better to write in simple English than in what some people perceive to be ‘grander’ or ‘more sophisticated’ language. This short article illustrates what can happen, using a real example.

Here we have a simple sentence in English: “ Inspired by her visit to London, Mary redecorated her house.”

The subject of the sentence (Mary) is followed at once by a concrete verb in active voice (redecorated), followed by the object (her house). The phrase describing the subject is placed as close to it as possible: it is also logical that this comes right at the beginning, since the inspiration clearly came before the redecorating.

However, in business communications, many people find this sort of language too simple; not ‘formal’ enough. So they turn the sentence round and use the passive voice. This very often leads the writer into the common trap in which the adjectival phrase now describes the object and not the subject. Obviously it is Mary, and not her house, who visited London.

Now, if we really want to make it sound ‘learned’, we can swap the concrete verbs for abstract nouns plus neutral verbs (do, make, perform, etc). So instead of ‘having been inspired’ we write ‘inspiration having been gained’, and instead of ‘redecorated’ we write ‘the redecoration was performed’. However, we have seen that there is some sort of problem with the adjectival phrase, so we change it (unfortunately the phrase, not its position!) to make it clear that Mary did the visiting. Of course, ‘house’ is a bit ordinary too, so we could call it a ‘dwelling’ or perhaps a ‘residence’. Now we have:

“Her inspiration having been gained by visiting London, the redecoration of the residence was performed by Mary.”

OK, you

e subject of the sentence (Mary) is followed at once by a concrete verb in active voice (redecorated), followed by the object (her house). The phrase describing the subject is placed as close to it as possible: it is also logical that this comes right at the beginning, since the inspiration clearly came before the redecorating.

However, in business communications, many people find this sort of language too simple; not ‘formal’ enough. So they turn the sentence round and use the passive voice. This very often leads the writer into the common trap in which the adjectival phrase now describes the object and not the subject. Obviously it is Mary, and not her house, who visited London.

Now, if we really want to make it sound ‘learned’, we can swap the concrete verbs for abstract nouns plus neutral verbs (do, make, perform, etc). So instead of ‘having been inspired’ we write ‘inspiration having been gained’, and instead of ‘redecorated’ we write ‘the redecoration was performed’. However, we have seen that there is some sort of problem with the adjectival phrase, so we change it (unfortunately the phrase, not its position!) to make it clear that Mary did the visiting. Of course, ‘house’ is a bit ordinary too, so we could call it a ‘dwelling’ or perhaps a ‘residence’. Now we have:

“Her inspiration having been gained by visiting London, the redecoration of the residence was performed by Mary.”

OK, you

munications, many people find this sort of language too simple; not ‘formal’ enough. So they turn the sentence round and use the passive voice. This very often leads the writer into the common trap in which the adjectival phrase now describes the object and not the subject. Obviously it is Mary, and not her house, who visited London.

Now, if we really want to make it sound ‘learned’, we can swap the concrete verbs for abstract nouns plus neutral verbs (do, make, perform, etc). So instead of ‘having been inspired’ we write ‘inspiration having been gained’, and instead of ‘redecorated’ we write ‘the redecoration was performed’. However, we have seen that there is some sort of problem with the adjectival phrase, so we change it (unfortunately the phrase, not its position!) to make it clear that Mary did the visiting. Of course, ‘house’ is a bit ordinary too, so we could call it a ‘dwelling’ or perhaps a ‘residence’. Now we have:

“Her inspiration having been gained by visiting London, the redecoration of the residence was performed by Mary.”

OK, you

want to make it sound ‘learned’, we can swap the concrete verbs for abstract nouns plus neutral verbs (do, make, perform, etc). So instead of ‘having been inspired’ we write ‘inspiration having been gained’, and instead of ‘redecorated’ we write ‘the redecoration was performed’. However, we have seen that there is some sort of problem with the adjectival phrase, so we change it (unfortunately the phrase, not its position!) to make it clear that Mary did the visiting. Of course, ‘house’ is a bit ordinary too, so we could call it a ‘dwelling’ or perhaps a ‘residence’. Now we have:

“Her inspiration having been gained by visiting London, the redecoration of the residence was performed by Mary.”

OK, you

rase, so we change it (unfortunately the phrase, not its position!) to make it clear that Mary did the visiting. Of course, ‘house’ is a bit ordinary too, so we could call it a ‘dwelling’ or perhaps a ‘residence’. Now we have:

“Her inspiration having been gained by visiting London, the redecoration of the residence was performed by Mary.”

OK, you say, nobody writes like this. Oh yes they do! What follows is the suggested text of a sign for display at a trade fair, where you must communicate your key message as succinctly as possible. An experienced, highly educated technical person, a Scandinavian who almost certainly speaks very good English in normal conversation, wrote this text (which has no specific errors as such):

In implementations of both e-Commerce and PKI environments, a significant improvement of secure web server response time can be achieved by using the XYZ accelerator.

Do you recognise anything here? How about ‘implementation’ and ‘improvement’ as abstract nouns? And “can be achieved” is both a ‘nothing’ verb and in the passive voice. The subject (in this case the name of the product they want to sell) comes right at the very end of a long sentence. Also we have the Germanic style of creating compound words by using nouns as adjectives and then stringing them together: ‘web server response time’ (four nouns there). Let’s try to improve it a bit:

When implementing both e-Commerce and PKI environments, the response time of secure web servers can be improved significantly by using the XYZ accelerator.

Now at least we have concrete verbs (implementing and improved) in place of the abstract nouns, and we have corrected the nouns-as-adjectives string. But this can still be much improved. How? Change the verb to active voice