abstract language, 17–23, 26–27
ad-words, see adjectives; adverbs
adjectives: ‘academic adjectives’, 16, 28, 39, 43, 47, 48
concrete or abstract, 43
excessive use of, 39–44
derived from nouns or verbs, 22, 26, 43
nouns or verbs used as, 7, 26, 46–47
adverbs: concrete or abstract, 43
excessive use of, 39–48
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 23–24
Austen, Jane, 51
Banville, John, 46
be-verbs, see verbs
Byatt, A. S., 20
Churchill, Winston, 35
concrete language, 23–25
Dawkins, Richard, 44–45
Dickens, Charles, 8–9
Dickinson, Emily, 55
Didion, Joan, 24
Gold, Glen David, 41
Hamilton, W. D., 44–45
imagery, 10, 16–20, 23–24, 27, 32, 54
King, Martin Luther, 24–25
Leggott, Michele, 32
McPhee, John, 10–11
Morgan, Robert, 18
Morris, Adalaide, 38
Nabokov, Vladimir, 43–44
nominalisations, 17, 21–22, 24–26
nouns: abstract nouns, 17–22, 26–27, 31
concrete nouns, 17–23, 26–27, 38–40
separation from verbs, 29, 34, 36–37
prepositions: effect on syntax, 31–34
dynamic versus static, 31–32, 36
excessive or insufficient use of, 33–35, 38
prepositional phrases, 55–56
Shakespeare, William, 9–10, 23, 41–42, 44, 50, 53, 55, 65
Smoot, George, 23
Sobel, Dava, 20–21
syntax, 5–6, 11–12, 14–15, 34, 64
verbs: active verbs, 1–3, 5–12, 14–15, 39–40
be-verbs, 5–9, 12, 49–51, 55–56
passive verb constructions, 6, 14–15
separation from nouns, 29, 34, 36–37
use in vivid prose, 13, 15–16, 18, 22, 35, 42, 51
waste words: effect on syntax, 49, 56–58
obfuscation of meaning, 56
use together, 56–58, 61; see also ‘it’, ‘that’, ‘there’, ‘this’, ‘which’
‘which’, 60
WritersDiet Test: diagnosis of writing fitness, 2–3, 67
examples of, 16, 28, 38, 48, 62, 65, 70–71, 73
instructions for electronic version, 72
instructions for manual version, 68–69
zombie nouns, see nominalisations