Day 116: Remove prepositional phrases showing ownership.

Prepositional phrases inhibit direct and engaging writing. While they may provide useful descriptions, they do weaken writing. For this reason, we try to avoid them when possible. One way we do this is by revising prepositional phrases indicating ownership. Consider this sentence.

“The book by the new author was well received.”

This can be revised as

“The new author’s book was well received.”

For a more complicated example, consider this sentence.

“The Economic Council of the City of Santa Fe met to discuss road construction.”

We could revise this as follows.

“The City of Santa Fe’s Economic Council met to discus road conditions.”

(In this case, we didn’t change “City of Santa Fe” because that is an official name.)