Here are three tips to strengthen your sentences and make your writing stronger.

Here are three tips to strengthen your declarative sentences:

1.  Your writing will be more effective if you use strong verbs and nouns instead of trying to prop up weak ones with adjectives and adverbs.

Weak: The doctor intentionally spoke untruthfully about the diagnosis.

Strong: The doctor lied about the diagnosis.

Weak: The advertising agency maliciously took advantage of persons with limited income and limited intelligence.

Strong: The advertising agency deceived the poor and the ignorant.

2.  Carefully choose strong adjectives and adverbs, and avoid adding intensifiers.

violent (Not: rather violent)

starved (Not: somewhat starved)

histronic (Not: slightly histronic)

3.  In contrast, do not try to prop up weak adjectives and adverbs with a string of intensifiers.

She was infuriated. (Not: she was very, very, very mad.)

The pain was excruciating. (Not: The pain was really, really bad.)

Be sure to get a copy of my book, Simple Steps to Sentence Sense, which includes pages and pages of help in becoming a better writer.