Style

Ganges

Suggest improvements for the highlighted area: Any visitor to the Ganges is likely to see a wide variety of birds. Parakeets flash by. A vulture circles above, patiently waiting for its next meal. The fork-tailed tern screams like a banshee before diving like a bomber to catch its prey. A hoopoe, with its slender, downward-curving bill, putters around looking for grubs. And long-legged storks wade through shallow waters, playing the decision close to the vest right down to the wire before snapping up fish. Answer: - Style: Avoid Bad Figures of Speech - As we improve our abilities to compare things, good figures of speech will become easier to summon. But along the way, we should be careful not to overdo it. Too many writers get carried away and make a mess of their similes and metaphors. Suggestion: Avoid stacking similes. Our opening paragraph shows an example: The fork-tailed tern screams like a banshee before diving like a bomber to catch its prey. It is better to avoid similes than it is to stack them up and confuse the reader: The fork-tailed tern screeches before diving to catch its prey. Or better yet, we could use a descriptive metaphor: The ford-tailed tern stabs the silence with a screech before diving upon its prey.

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