Helen Sword, professor and director of the Centre for Learning and Research in Higher Education at the University of Auckland, authored the book The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose (University of Chicago Press, 2016). She offers five rules to improve your prose: 1. Verbal verve: use active verbs whenever possible. Favor strong, specific, robust action verbs (scrutinize, dissect, recount, capture) over weak, vague, lazy ones (have, do, show). Limit your use of be-verbs (
