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This is a list of common prose problems in the Cricket Project's Featured Article Candidates.
- because: Check your prose for because, caused by, since, as a result, due to, thus, therefore, in order to, and other cause-and-effect words, and consider whether other words would work better. Most writers prefer He swung the hammer at the nail to He swung the hammer due to the fact that he wanted to hit the nail, but some get tripped up on longer sentences. After works better than because in: They retreated because the enemy broke through their lines. Avoid therefore in: The ship stayed in port two days loading low-grade coal, and therefore never caught up to the fleeing destroyer. (Therefore ... because the ship stayed in port two days, because it loaded coal, or because the coal was low-grade? Therefore raises this question, but the answer isn't clear.) When there's a weak causal link (unrest caused by government repression), less emphatic words are more common in reliable sources (unrest spurred by government repression, government repression led to unrest). And of course, don't say or imply that one thing caused another if your sources don't back that up.
- chronology: Generally order a storyline chronologically within a section or subsection, so that the order of events is clear. Subsequently is often ambiguous: readers may interpret it as consequently, immediately after that, or a long time after that.
- clarity: Read your work slowly to make sure that you're saying what you mean to say. If possible, avoid words and phrases that are unfamiliar to a lot of your readers. If you can't find more common words that could be substituted for unfamiliar words without a loss of clarity, provide a link to a Wikipedia page or a section of a page that explains the words. If many readers won't even be able to guess what the sentence means without clicking on that link, give at least a clue to the meaning in the text in addition to the link.
- conciseness: If there's a way to replace any long string of words with a few words without losing any information, do it. Being and other forms of the verb to be are often used redundantly.
- consistency: Be consistent with names of things and with formats, such as for units, currency, times, and dates.
- mindreading: Don't report on what people were thinking unless your sources make a good case that they know what people were thinking and that the thoughts were an important part of the story. Instead of They decided to build torpedo boats (or intended or wanted), just say They built torpedo boats or They started building torpedo boats or (if accurate) They submitted an order for torpedo boats. The best option is to mention whatever happened (a law was passed, an order was submitted) that indicated that boats were about to be built. The second-best option is to attribute the belief that they wanted to build boats to some historian (after all, historians are trained to interpret source materials, so they can get away with it ... we shouldn't). The worst option is to imply that Wikipedia is a reliable source on what someone was thinking.
- misplaced modifier: A modifier is misplaced if it's not clear which word(s) it refers to, or if it's so distant from the word(s) it refers to that readers have to read ahead to be sure what you're saying. In He left abruptly after delivering the order, which was misinterpreted by the sergeant, the pronoun which might refer to the order or the abrupt exit.
- repetition: If possible, don't say the same thing twice, using the same or different words. Avoid New here: New carriers being built.
- series: The elements in a series ("X, Y and Z") should be grammatically parallel. Avoid her in: The ship's guns, crane and her fuel tanks. ("... her crane and her fuel tanks" would be parallel, but don't write that either, since her is redundant to The ship's.) If one element is more complex than the others, it often works best to put that element last in the series ("X, Y, and the young Z, who later achieved ...").