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 ...

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 ...

We are concluding our discussion on phrases, clauses and sentences today. In the last two classes, we compared the three, underlining how a sentence is usually a combination of clauses and phrases. We ...

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).

When writing, it is often necessary to link ideas together. Conjunctions are linking words, such as 'and', 'because', 'then', 'however', that help your reader follow your train of thought, or see the ...

Last week, we started discussing the differences between a phrase, clause and a sentence. We defined a phrase as a group of words without a subject and a predicate, though standing together to form a ...