Keep your subject and verb close

Together forever.

A simple way to add clarity to your writing is to keep the subject and verb of a sentence close together. When they are separated by a lot of other words, readers have to hunt for the words that belong together. This can be especially confusing if the extra words include other verbs.

Bad Good writers, no matter how much they like to interrupt themselves with a verbal diversion, imagine a magnet between subject and verb. 

Good Good writers imagine a magnet between subject and verb, no matter how much they like to interrupt themselves with a verbal diversion.

Here's another example, this one from, ironically, the federal government.

The natural word order of an English sentence is subject-verb-object. This is how you first learned to write sentences, and it's still the best. When you put modifiers, phrases, or clauses between two or all three of these essential parts, you make it harder for the user to understand you. 

Consider this long, convoluted sentence: 

If any member of the board retires, the company, at the discretion of the board, and after notice from the chairman of the board to all the members of the board at least 30 days before executing this option, may buy, and the retiring member must sell, the member's interest in the company. 

In essence, the sentence says: The company may buy a retiring member's interest. All the rest of the material modifies the basic idea, and should be moved to another sentence or at least to the end of the sentence.  

Remember boys and girls, Big Brother is watching you write.

Please don't say this

I'm begging you.

For the past 38 years Lake Superior State University has compiled a list of words and expressions that should be banished from the English language.

This year, the expression Americans would most like banished is, predictably, "the fiscal cliff." Other top submissions of words and expressions needing banishment:

Kick the can down the road: A child's game has turned into the way legislators express their inability to do their jobs. Rassmussen reports that just 5 percent of Americans think Congress is doing an excellent job. Perhaps it's time voters kicked these do-nothings to the curb.

Double-down: Oh stop it.

YOLO: This expression, which stands for "you only live once," is used by every knucklehead in the country to explain why they narrowly missed being on this year's listing of Darwin award winners. At least the expression "it seemed like a good idea at the time" intimates you won't be doing a similarly stupid action again soon. In this case, the YOLO set appear unrepentant and unwilling to learn.

Spoiler alert: Expression used to ridicule the one member of the YOLO set who has the functioning brain cells to say: "Uh, not a good idea...."

Bucket List: Five-year-old movie about the things two cancer patients wanted to do before they died. See YOLO and get over it already.

Trending: Trend, turned into a verb, is ever so much more annoying than when "Googling," which was a made-up name, became a verb. Hopefully, like pet rocks, this fad of talking up what's trending will fade.

Superfood: This refers to anything that hasn't been triple-processed; hydrogenated; dried; or placed into a plastic wrapper that will keep it fresh for 25 years. People used to call this food.

Guru: Unless you're in an ashram, you are probably referring to an expert.

So is the book dead or not?

The old library. Good enough for me.

In my small town, the corner on Main Street where the library sits is wrapped in fabric fencing, shielding from view a major construction project to expand the building.

I suppose it's going to resemble the library in Darien, Connecticut, not too many miles away, which is an impressive, sprawling structure.

As I drove by the construction my taxes are funding I wondered: Why are they doing this if the paper book is dead? Are libraries, like any good bureaucracy, reinventing themselves to stay alive?

They're certainly trying. The State of Connecticut is pouring millions into library renovations.

Two articles in The Wall Street Journal get at this matter from two different angles.

Peter Mandel, a children's book author, has noticed how his library has morphed into something digital.

Remember library books? Prior to the iPad and Kindle, readers used to pore over these paper and cardboard rectangles, possibly savoring their musty smell, their cover art and typefaces. 

But take a peek around your local library. You'll see oceans of DVDs, CDs, copy machines and computer terminals, with customers queued up to take their turn with all this shared technology. Somewhere in the background—or more than likely exiled to the basement—are the stacks for book-browsing that we used to know.

Nicholas Carr, on the other hand, tells us paper book lovers not to worry.

Half a decade into the e-book revolution, though, the prognosis for traditional books is suddenly looking brighter. Hardcover books are displaying surprising resiliency. The growth in e-book sales is slowing markedly. And purchases of e-readers are actually shrinking, as consumers opt instead for multipurpose tablets. It may be that e-books, rather than replacing printed books, will ultimately serve a role more like that of audio books—a complement to traditional reading, not a substitute.

How attached are Americans to old-fashioned books? Just look at the results of a Pew Research Center survey released last month. The report showed that the percentage of adults who have read an e-book rose modestly over the past year, from 16% to 23%. But it also revealed that fully 89% of regular book readers said that they had read at least one printed book during the preceding 12 months. Only 30% reported reading even a single e-book in the past year.

Everything old is new again. So will DVDs or books fill my new library?