Review sentence structures in your handbook and pay special attention to deleting redundancy and "fluff" those extra words or phrases that add neither meaning nor emphasis to your text. Aim for clarity and concision; there's no need to fill up pages with uninteresting, boring, "say nothing" terms. Let's review a few key points that will help you write to interest and persuade your readers.

1. Use active verbs. Let subject perform some action, rather than fit into a stative position, e.g., "the man RUNS fast" rather than "the man IS a fast runner" or "Jason eats food quickly" rather than "Jason is a fast eater."
2. Use the passive voice when it provides the focus or emphasis you want, e.g., "the meeting was deliberately sidetracked by the manager" has a different emphasis than "the manager deliberately sidetracked the meeting."
3. Use "to be" stative verbs when you need them. "The professor 's lecture IS boring" provides information and the truth about the lecture. If you write "the professor 's BORING lecture..." instead, you will emphasize whatever predicate follows this phrase; you ' ' ' have taken the boringness for granted. CHOOSE stative verbs; don't just let them "happen" by default in your sentences.
4. Keep subjects and verbs close together; if you embed several phrases or clauses between the actor and the action, the reader may lose track of your intent. Also be sure subjects and verbs agree, e.g., "that student GOES to class" rather than "that student, but not the rest, GO to class" or "he IS" rather than "he among other men ARE"; errors similar to the second example in each set occur frequently when there 's embedding in a sentence.
5. Subject-verb agreement becomes problematic when a sentence contains a subject that is singular followed by a modifier containing a term that is plural (or vice versa): "The man with many companies are successful." "Man" is a singular subject, but because the plural "companies" immediately precedes the verb, at first glance "are" seems all right. It 's not; the verb must agree with the subject. The correction: "The man with many companies is successful."
6. Avoid repetition and cut out extra words. Especially watch such sentences as these: Professor Barnard assigned a lot of homework. The homework consisted of reading two chapters in the text book and writing out the answers to four questions. The questions were very difficult. Notice how "homework" and "questions" are repeated? Also notice that "writing out the answers" could be simply "answered." Cure that by substituting "that" or "which" for the repeated terms: Professor Barnard assigned a lot of homework that consisted of reading two chapters in the text book and answering four very difficult questions. You could even substitute "consisting" for "that consisted."
7. In general, introduce new information at the end of a sentence. Of course, if you want the reader to focus immediately on the new point, you may want to put it early in the sentence. Think about your emphasis, and choose your position.
8. Vary the sentences in length and construction. Your handbook has many suggestions. Use them. And check your essay to see what you 've written. Mark off sentences. Are they all the same length, and if so, can you combine some? Do they all start with a transitional word, or all use subject-verb-object order, or all put new information at the end? Climb in the reader's chair and read what you've written. Read the text aloud. How does it look? How does it sound?
9. Say what you mean. If your sentence doesn't seem to convey your intention, ask yourself what you 're trying to say. What idea do you want to give your reader?