James J. Kilpatrick, on vacation this week, shares a column published in March 2004: Among the most readable publications in the field of law is Supreme Court History, published every four months by ...

MODIFIERS give us information about a noun or pronoun in a sentence. They are important because they help to paint the true picture of the information we seek to convey to our reader or listener. The ...

So how do we produce readable and clean scientific writing? One of the good elements of style is to avoid adverbs and adjectives (Zinsser 2006). Adjectives and adverbs sprinkle paper with unnecessary ...

When dealing with compound modifiers, heed this advice from The Associated Press Stylebook: "Do not use a hyphen between adverbs ending in '-ly' and adjectives they modify." For example, no hyphens ...

For comparisons that are negative or downward, ‘less’ and ‘least’ are used before the positive form of the modifier. To make your writing clear and concise, be careful to avoid using two modifiers ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. The “rules” under which hyphens are used to connect multiple modifiers, like “well(-)known man,” are varied and ...