A couple of cautions about using PP’s: They should refer clearly to a noun or pronoun in the sentence. And they should not be placed too far away from the words they modify. This can be awkward and confusing. See the difference in the sentences below. Inspired by the beautiful spring day, I walked to […]

Where have all the participial phrases gone? Almost nobody uses them anymore. When we edit books, we marvel at how much waste and clumsiness could be avoided with a simple PP. We are forever shortening and streamlining material by employing them ourselves. A participle is a verb that is used as an adjective or adverb; […]

Before we went on vacation some time ago, we wrote a blog on last lines in books. Today, we have the origins of those lines for anyone who is interested. But as we were thinking about this blog, we wondered what the relationship is between last lines and first lines of books. So we looked […]