Thursday, October 13, 2011

Murder: Avoid Saying Nothing

Like in the first of these two grafs:

Nina Cortez is a book keeper at the restaurant and has worked there for seven years.

She said she arrived at the inn around 9 a.m. and entered the building with her key to the employee entrance in the back.

The first sentence is what I call an empty sentence: it doesn't say anything of reader value. It identifies someone but doesn't say what they have to say. It attribution without something to attribute.

But I know what you're trying to do: you're detailing who the person is to justify their relevance in the following graf. I'd fix this by simply merging these two grafs, like this:

Nina Cortez, a book keeper at the restaurant who has worked there for seven years, said she arrived at the inn around 9 a.m. and entered the building with her key to the employee entrance in the back.

Now, there's no empty sentence.

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