Day 257: Name the actor of the actions.

When you keep your actors hidden, you will produce listless writing. By actors, I mean the people who perform the action. Consider this sentence.

“The budget adjustment request submitted to the state department will allow the development of new programs.”

This grammatically correct sentence doesn’t state who has performed the action, although we know “budget adjustment request” is the subject of “will allow.” However, we don’t know who performed the action of submitting the request, and this prevents the sentence from having an active, engaging tone.

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This also may damage the clarity of the sentence because a central action, “submitted,” has no subject. We can improve this sentence by naming the actor of this action. We can also change “development” to the verb “develop” and name the actor for this action. This gives us the following revision.

“The executive director submitted a budget adjustment request to the state department, which will allow agency staff to develop new programs.”

The overall result is a sentence that is clearer and more active.