False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Avoid front-loading your sentences and 
overusing the passive voice.
Harold Evans has edited some major authors, 
among them Norman Mailer, E.L. Doctorow and 
Gore Vidal. And though each has his own 

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unique style, they all follow the same principles 
of clear and effective writing.
Most writers agree that the passive voice should 
be avoided.
This is because the passive voice adds needless 
words to your sentence and strips away the 
urgency and command that the active voice 
provides.
For example, you might write a memo in the 
passive voice that reads, “It was decided that the 
next employee meeting should be held on 
Monday.” But in the active voice, the memo can 
clearly state, “The next employee meeting is on 
Monday.”
Of course, every rule has its exceptions and the 
passive voice can be useful for showing tact or 
delicacy around a sensitive subject. In other 
cases, you might want to use the passive voice 
to write a sentence that highlights the receiver 
rather than the doer, which is something the 
passive voice can do by putting the receiver at 
the front of a sentence.
So if your story is focussed on a baby, and not, 
say, a president, it might be best to write, “The 
baby was kissed by the president,” rather than, 
“The president kissed the baby.”
Another golden rule is to avoid front-loading your 
sentences with dozens of words before stating 
your point.
Here’s a typical example: “Given the problems of 
unfriendly climate, poor infrastructure, various 
militant groups vying for bribes and a lack of 
refrigerated trucks, it was difficult for the 
government to transport food to the village.”
This sentence forces the reader to keep track of 
twenty words and a list of problems before they 
know what the issue is. A better and clearer 
sentence would state the problem first and then 
list the reasons.