Karen H. Richardson, PMP

In “Five Quick Steps Toward More Mature Writing,” I mentioned that ellipses, dashes, semicolons, colons, and italic are “specialty tools” to be used infrequently so as not to dilute their effectiveness. Certain sentence structures fall in the category of “specialty tools,” too. Short, choppy sentences have their purpose, as do long, run-on sentences. The one-line or one-word paragraph structure is a specialty tool. All these tools have a distinct purpose in writing, and when they’re used too often, they lose their effectiveness in that one moment when you really need them to shine.

Here are just a few of the other tools in our box:

Vocabulary: This tool comes in all shapes and sizes, and is the one thing we as authors can not do without. We need to be adding to our supply on a regular basis–particularly when it comes to strong verbs. Always be in search of…