Style

Mississippi

Suggest improvements for the highlighted problem area: From St. Louis to Baton Rouge, the Mississippi is a tree-lined, muddy-banked river with football-field-shaped boats called tows. Each tow has origination in individual barges, with an interface implementation competency of 50, the bottom line being a lashing procedure empowering a parallelepiped paradigm. Up to 500 railway freight cars can be transported in one tow. And each incredibly awesome tow is pushed from behind by a disgusting square-bowed towboat. Life on a towboat can be a little hard. A crew of 10 often spends 30 days on the river, seldom sleeping more than 5 hours in a day. It is rather important that they are very watchful when navigating the channel, being pretty alert for shifting sand bars. Answer: - Style: Avoid Bland Qualifiers - Suggestion: Delete bland qualifiers. For example, don't overuse the word little: Life on a towboat can be a little hard. Life on a towboat can be hard. Other bland qualifiers include rather, very, and pretty: It is rather important that they are very watchful when navigating the channel, being pretty alert for shifting sand bars. Rather often the sentence is pretty adequate without the qualifiers. (We are very serious about this!): It is important that they are watchful when navigating the channel, being alert for shifting sand bars. Refine this sentence further to produce a concise version: They must carefully navigate the channel, ever on the alert for shifting sand bars. Only lazy writers leave these adjectives in their sentences. Be good -- edit your way to clear prose, leaving these parasitic adjectives behind.

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