Figures of Speech in Expository Writing

When you write to explain something, your goal is to be clear, not necessarily beautiful or picturesque. Some figures of speech are so common we don’t think of them as such; see the use of “window” in the sentence below. But how about the word “born”?

Because the cesium-rich particles were born early in the meltdown, they offer scientists an important window into the exact sequence of events in the disaster.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radioactive-glass-beads-may-tell-the-terrible-tale-of-how-the-fukushima-meltdown-unfolded

Being born is normally a biological term. Might be a little better to have said “…particles were created,” eh? Or how about getting rid of the passive while we’re at it, and say that the particles formed early in the meltdown?

Not as distracting now, is it?

Rule of thumb: The more technical you are, the less poetic you should be.

Here’s a photo of the event:

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Commas separate things. Dates from years, cities from states, and so on. Another thing they separate is direct address, as shown below:

The more astute among you might suggest that the maybe guy was using an appositive, explaining what was to be eaten. Good point, but that’s a bigger break than a comma can handle, so in that case, he should have used an M-dash:

Would you like the all-you-can-eat—shrimp!

The hyphens and the cook are both correct, by the way.

This is a sixth grade lesson, so you probably know it, so consider this post to be a review, or something to show your fifth grade friends.

“Well” goes with verbs, things you do. We call it an adverb. It tells how you do something. My wife cooks well.

“Good” goes with nouns. We call it an adjective. It tells what something is like. My wife is a good cook.

So the robot, of all people, gets it wrong. Next-to-last panel. He’s telling how it worked out, so he should have used “well.”

One exception to this rule: “Well” is an adjective when you’re talking about health. You should say “I don’t feel well when I eat too much.”

Back in February I mentioned this construction, putting two verbs together, especially “is.” Here’s another example:

“What this spring is is a miracle,” said Sean Milanovich, 49, a member of the Agua Caliente band of the Cahuilla tribe, which makes its home in the Old Woman Mountains southeast of the spring.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-massive-aquifer-lies-beneath-the-mojave-desert-could-it-help-solve-californias-water-problem/2019/03/03/a5d8fe14-354e-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html

As I mentioned last time, this looks as if it ought to be wrong somehow, but it’s not!

The first “is” goes with what’s before it, which is a noun clause. That clause functions as the subject of the second “is,” which is the sentence’s main verb.

You could reword the sentnce to make this a little easier to see:

This spring is what is a miracle.

or even:

This spring is a miracle.

Simpler, more concise. I like it.

I’m a technical writer. A lot of SMEs have handed me drafts of their documentation to “work my magic” on. If their document has an introduction (usually a paragraph right under the first heading) I frequently have to fix the first sentence. They like to write something like this:

This document is intended to describe/show/give the instructions for operating XYZ software/machine/process.

(the words with slashes are variables)

Folks, things like instructions are tangible. Either they’re in the document or they aren’t.

Get rid of that “intended”! The document either describes/shows/gives the content or it doesn’t!

Today I ran into a document that both uses “intended” and doesn’t use “intended” correctly !

My introduction is intended to provide a motivation for what follows. The first four chapters discuss the most plentiful objects in the night sky—the stars.

See? He intends to motivate you, and actually discusses the topic. Good for him! Go thou and do likewise!

The document deserves a bit more than a line of citation. The University of Chicago Press has a program where they let you download one of their books (of their choosing) for free every month. I downloaded this book, How We See the Sky: A Naked-Eye Tour of Day and Night by Thomas Hockey in March of 2019. Here’s a link to their program. If you like to read serious books online, take a look.

www.press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html

PS—He could have used the active instead of passive (“intends to provide” instead of “is intended to provide”), but hey, it’s academic. They always use the passive, don’t they?