RE: Overuse of "It"

["Condo, Candis" <ccondo -at- c-cor -dot- com>]

I can't recommend Brogan's book, Clear Technical Writing strongly enough. It might be a bit dated now but not by much. I used this book as a text book for the senior level tech writing classes I taught at San Diego State in the early 80s, back in the days when SDS had one of the few technical writing certificate programs in the county. Brogan tackles the use of the passive voice, the overuse of "utilize" rather than "use" and so on. Love this book.
 
Candis L Condo

________________________________

From: techwr-l-bounces+ccondo=c-cor -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com on behalf of Jean Hollis Weber
Sent: Sat 3/24/2007 2:44 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Overuse of "It"



Karen wrote:
 > I'm looking on the web for good examples for avoiding the usage
 > of this pronoun; however, finding hits on wordiness and overuse
 > of it can confuse the search engines.
 >
 > Does anyone have any good links for me to distribute to my
 > scientific co-workers?

I highly recommend John A. Brogan's "Clear Technical Writing"
(McGraw-Hill, 1973, ISBN 0070079749), an excellent resource. If
you don't collapse from shock at the "List Price" on Amazon,
you'll find several used copies are available at a reasonable price.

I have a summary of sample sentence structures to replace "it
is", "there is" and similar structures on this page:
http://jeanweber.com/howto/stressing.htm

Good luck! -- Jean
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