Many writers, even economists and statisticians who should know better, confuse percent and percentage point and thus their readers.

 
The abuse is common with rates, such as those of GDP growth:

 
Brazil’s GDP growth increased by 2.5 percent in 2007.

 
If Brazil’s GDP growth had been 5 percent in 2006 and increased by 2.5 percent, the growth rate for 2007 would be 5.125 percent. But if growth increased by 2.5 percentage points, the growth rate for 2007 would be 7.5 percent. A big difference.

 
The differences between two percentages are thus measured in percentage points not in percent, used for ratios and shares.

 
Consider these differences in the shares of three categories of voters from Wednesday’s Washington Post:

 
An estimated 2 million Democrats voted, nearly triple the number who turned out in the past two presidential campaigns in the state. Clinton ran up big margins with her core constituencies, winning white voters with incomes under $50,000 by 32 points, voters over age 65 by 26 percent, and Catholic voters by 38 percent, more than countering Obama’s strong showing among black voters and higher-income whites in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

 
For the 32 points, the writer should have made it clear that they are percentage points (this wasn’t a basketball game that Clinton won by 32 points, with a score of 120-88).

 
And the 26 percent and 38 percent are plainly wrong. Both should have been percentage points, shortened to points if the first use had been 32 percentage points, specifying the kind of points.

 
If the margin among voters over age 65 had been 63 percent of the total to 37 percent, that would be 26 percentage points. But if Clinton had won those voters by 26 percent, her margin would have been 11.8 percentage points (0.37 x 0.32 = 0.118) and her share of the total 48.8 percent (0.37 + 0.118).

 
(Percent comes from the Latin per centum, by the hundred.)

Sentence fragments, shunned by rigid writers and grousing grammarians, often mimic speech and thus pick up the pace of your writing. Unexpected, they can command attention to strong points and comments. Here’s an example from a recent New York Times article on revitalizing Starbucks:

But revitalizing the Starbucks experience is not going to be enough. Not even close.

The full sentence would have been:

But revitalizing the Starbucks experience is not going to be enough. It will not even be close.

Stripping the subject and verb from the front and leaving the fragment drives the reader straight to the point.

Here’s another example from the ClearWriter archives:

The marriage of America and the rest of the world is just that. A marriage, for better or worse.

The more conventional version might have been:

The marriage of America and the rest of the world is just that, a marriage for better or worse.

A small difference, but a difference. Because the fragment is unconventional, it draws more attention to the point than the conventional version does. Just be sure that the passage merits the attention.

You can occasionally use a dash to separate part of a sentence and draw attention to it, just as you would with a pause in speech. Because dashes are versatile, it helps to know their three functions: linking an elaboration, setting off parenthetical material, or injecting a pause. Each use adds more emphasis than the standard comma, parentheses, or word space.

Some dashes link an elaboration, replacing a comma or a colon. Here’s an example from Maureen Dowd in the New York Times:

But Saint Obama played the politics of character to an absurd extent. For 14 months, his argument for leading the world has been himself—his exquisitely globalized self.

With a comma instead of the dash, the passage would read:

But Saint Obama played the politics of character to an absurd extent. For 14 months, his argument for leading the world has been himself, his exquisitely globalized self.

The comma throws the reader too quickly into the trailing elaboration.

Elaborative dashes often attract more attention to a phrase than colons, as in this example from The Economist:

He is also interested in what some religions hold out as the ultimate reward for good behaviour—life after death.

Other dashes are parenthetical, helping readers wade through background or explanatory material in the middle of a sentence. Consider this example from The Atlantic:

The expensive cars [paparazzi] drive reflect the fact that Britney Spears—her marriages, custody battles, fights with her mom, new boyfriends, Starbucks runs, trips to the hospital—is a bigger and more lucrative story than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton or John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

The dashes help readers process the details without losing the writer’s thrust. The dash-less alternative is a jumble that makes it tough for readers to get from the subject (Britney Spears) to the verb (is):

The expensive cars [paparazzi] drive reflect the fact that Britney Spears, including her marriages, custody battles, fights with her mom, new boyfriends, Starbucks runs, and trips to the hospital, is a bigger and more lucrative story than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton or John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

And still other dashes inject a pause, forcing a moment of reflection on what precedes them—before flinging readers into what follows. Here’s an example from a World Bank World Development Report:

Yet billions of people still live in the darkness of poverty—unnecessarily.

Here the dash simply replaces a word space.

So when should you use a dash? Remember that dashes are pauses, so use them for emphasis—and sparingly. Also, avoid using them in a sentence that has a colon.

For the parts of sentences doing the same work—signaled by the conjunctions and, or, and but—repeating their grammatical structures adds balance and often picks up the cadence rather than smothers it.

Here’s an example from the New York Review of Books [and is implied, its omission adding to the rhythm of the sentence]:

White pine is too soft, he reasons, maple too sleek, oak too ordinary.

Repeating too before each adjective makes the list more memorable than anything varied structures or varied words would evoke.

Here’s another:

In my fantasy party we would support the interests of the poor and working classes, not the rich; the rights of animals and the environment would be fought for; and discrimination would be combated wherever we found it.

The reader will have trouble untangling the jumble. The original in The Economist had better structure and cadence:

In my fantasy party we would support the interests of the poor and working classes, not the rich; fight for the rights of animals and the environment; and combat discrimination wherever we found it.

The writer could have done even more to unify the rhythm:

In my fantasy party we would support the interests of the poor and working classes, not the rich; fight for the rights of animals and the environment, whether popular or not; and combat discrimination, wherever we found it.

In the original not the rich adds a phrase to the first element not shared by the others. Another solution would be to drop it:

In my fantasy party we would support the interests of the poor and working classes, fight for the rights of animals and the environment, and combat discrimination.

The choice is between a compact sentence and one that takes its time.

Given our preference for arranging series from short to long, we would recast the sentence this way:

In my fantasy party we would combat discrimination, support the interests of the poor and working classes, and fight for the rights of animals and the environment.

The last Tips talked about two elegant repetitions—repeating a word and repeating a root. This week’s adds a third, one more often associated with poems than with prose.

Alliteration, repeating a consonant sound at the beginning of two or more words in a sentence, can add poetry to the ordinary. It usually combines words with the same first letter. Like all repetition, it strengthens the link between words and the attention to those words. (Indeed, it preceded rhyming in Middle English.)

Consider this example from an old issue of The Economist:

Fatter capital ratios, fancy risk management systems, and faster diversification: all of these things are undoubtedly creating a fitter banking system.

Note that the repetition need not involve consecutive words. Here, it binds the sentence by linking the attributes of the banking system. To be parallel, fancy might have been fancier.

Another example, this one from The Economist’s “Flooding the Grand Canyon”:

Those glorious inundations moved massive quantities of sediment through the Grand Canyon, wiping the slate dirty, and making a muddy mess of silt and muck that would make modern river rafters cringe.

This use is less ordered than the first, but the alliteration still brings poetry, leaving the reader reveling in the consecutive m’s.

But use alliteration sparingly—it can be annoying if overused. The “Flooding” passage, for example, could easily have gone too far:

Those glorious inundations moved massive quantities of sediment through the Grand Canyon, wiping the slate dirty, and making a muddy mess of mire and muck that would make modern mariners misdoubt.

The alliteration now overwhelms the sentence’s point.

Last week’s Tip talked about one type of repetition—repeating a key term. A related technique is repeating the root of a word. Consider this example from The Economist:

Far from discrediting liberalism, corruption is discredited by it.

Repeating the root signals nuanced meaning and links two ideas more strongly than would occur otherwise. Here, juxtaposing the same root in active and passive constructions heightens the author’s proposed reversal of causality.

Or take these examples from the ClearWriter archives:

Values will not bring quality-of-life results unless we cherish principles.

Without repetition, the passage is bland. Try making a tighter link:

Values will not bring quality-of-life results unless we value principles.

Using value in both noun and verb forms brings a layer of meaning that was absent before. The result is a more interesting sentence.

But as always, use this technique with care: because the reader must slow down to register and consider the link, be sure that you’re not just being cute. And the repetition should add meaning. Take this example, abstracted from my editing work:

During the discussions, participants will discuss A, B, and C.

We don’t need to be told that people will discuss things at discussions. This isn’t rhetorical repetition. It’s just bad writing. Here, I might cut During the discussions or change discuss to something more communicative—say, develop policy recommendations for A, B, and C.

Repetition—far too often avoided—can be a powerful rhetorical device. It can bring order and balance to a sentence’s parts. And it can rivet a word to the reader’s frontal lobe with more impact than elegant variation ever could. This week’s Tip is on repeating a word.

Repeating a word increases its power in the sentence by forcing the reader to reconsider its meaning and that of the words it frames or modifies. Consider this example, from Henry Luce’s The American Century:

In this whole matter of War and Peace especially, we have been at various times and in various ways false to ourselves, false to each other, false to the facts of history, and false to the future.

The string of falses hammers the point and instills rhythm.

This edit counteracts the tendency of some writers to prefer synonyms over repetition. Perhaps intended to show a commend of language, this approach can confuse:

A delightful fairy tale has taken hold lately in some economic policy circles: the economy is poised for a glorious burst of sustained, 1960s-style growth without inflation. It’s a story told by a spectrum of influential figures, from conservatives to liberal luminaries. Like most good fables, this one features a horrible monster who is blocking the path to eternal happiness. That would be the chairman of the Fed, who cannot see that the economic terrain has shifted.

The three terms—tale, story, fable—force the reader to figure out whether the three are different or the same. The example is doctored slightly from the original. Sticking with fairy tale, tale, and tales, as Paul Krugman did in The New York Times Magazine, makes the passage more coherent—with the repeated terms binding the sentences:

A delightful fairy tale has taken hold lately in some economic policy circles: the economy is poised for a glorious burst of sustained, 1960s-style growth without inflation. It’s a tale told by a spectrum of influential figures, from conservatives to liberal luminaries. Like most good tales, this one features a horrible monster who is blocking the path to eternal happiness. That would be the chairman of the Fed, who cannot see that the economic terrain has shifted.

Two weeks ago, our Tip showed how to use semicolons to tightly link independent clauses parallel in construction. If parallel independent clauses repeat a verb, you can often drop the second verb, leaving the reader to insert it mentally. Consider this example from the New York Times Book Review:

Her novels registered these events most secretly, her letters not at all.

The flatter version might have been and her letters registered them not at all. Dropping and and registered them shortens the sentence and picks up the cadence. This omission of a word or words (ellipsis—or more specifically, zeugma, according to my colleague Nick) also works with a semicolon: Here’s an example from Alfred Jazin’s On Native Grounds:

Frank Norris became a naturalist out of his admiration for Zola; Stephen Crane, because the ferocious pessimism of naturalism suited his temperament exactly.

Note that when a semicolon connects two clauses, a comma often stands in for the omitted words.

Omitting the verb in a series of clauses can slam together subjects and objects, tightening the links. Here’s an example from an old issue of The Economist from the ClearWriter archives:

The building was cramped, working capital scarce, infrastructure fragile, and the bureaucracy tiresome.

But be sure that the verb tense and number (was, in this case) apply to each shortened clause: was scarce, was fragile, was tiresome. Some writers (incorrectly) omit a plural verb when the guiding verb is singular, as in the following slightly adjusted example:

The building was cramped, working capital scarce, infrastructure fragile, and the bureaucrats tiresome.

The singular verb was no longer fits all the clauses, upsetting the power and rhythm of the sentence, thus the switch to bureaucracy.

Like the semicolon, the colon joins in one sentence two ideas or elements that might be expressed in separate sentences, strengthening the bond. The second elements are often definitions, elaborations, or embellishments. Here’s an example from The Economist’s “The day after Super Tuesday”:

He [Barack Obama] also snatched two prizes on the coast: tiny Delaware and, more symbolically, Connecticut.

Note that what follows the colon needn’t be a complete sentence. Consider another example from The Economist’s “Speaking in tongues”:

Indonesia’s national language—a version of Malay called Bahasa Indonesia or just Indonesian—is unusual in that it is not the tongue of a dominant group: only about 3% of the population are ethnic Malays.

This usage is dubious. Some style guides (AP, for example) advise against using a dash and a colon in the same sentence.

Another function of the colon is to introduce a quotation (The minority leader delivered a harsh rebuttal:) or a list, either in text (Three areas for action:) or in bullets (see below).

But colons are often misused. Here are three don’ts:

• Don’t use a colon with for example (as in I’ve owned all types of pets, for example: cats, dogs, lizards, and ferrets.). The colon implies for example, which should be omitted.
• Don’t separate a preposition from its object (as in Over the last year I’ve traveled to: Arizona, New York, and Cambodia) or a verb from its objects (For dinner he ate: soup, salmon, spinach, spaghetti, salad, and sherbet.).
• Don’t use colons where you should use semicolons, or semicolons where you should use colons. Colons imply a direct connection between two ideas—and what follows the colon is subordinate to what precedes it (think of it as shorthand for that is). And remember that semicolons should generally join two ideas only if both would be complete sentences taken alone, sentences that should be parallel when possible. (LeTourneau University has a quick primer on the basic differences between colons and semicolons if you need a refresher.)

Starting with and, but, or or opens a sentence swiftly. Sometimes, however, two clauses are best joined more subtly. For that, there are semicolons, the subject of this week’s Tip.

Semicolons can join independent clauses (either would be a sentence on its own) without using a conjunction, binding two or three closely related ideas. Ideally, the clauses are parallel in construction. Semicolons signal a pause longer than a comma, but shorter than a period.

Some writers use them to link closely related clauses in a paragraph, to distinguish them from more loosely related clauses and ideas. Here’s an example from Michael Powell and Michael Cooper’s “For Giuliani, a Dizzying Free Fall” in the New York Times:

But politics does not march to a military beat; it is a business of shifting loyalties. By Tuesday night, even those voters who rated terrorism as the most important issue were as likely to vote for Mr. Romney or Mr. McCain as for Mr. Giuliani. And those who had voted early for Mr. Giuliani now felt a sense of irrelevance.

Or consider this example:

Alarm on Wall Street is business as usual; alarm verging on panic at the Federal Reserve is more difficult to shrug off.

That’s Clive Crook showcasing a semicolon at its best—slamming together two parallel ideas and constructions—in his blog entry, “The politics of recession.”

Our standard disclaimer (use flourishes too often and you’ll risk annoying your reader) applies to semicolons with particular force. Joining independent clauses with semicolons is a judgment of meaning and nuance—so some writers throw them in at every opportunity. Try to be more judicious.

Note

This usage differs from semicolons in series. There, semicolons segment complex or nested elements to avoid tangling the reader in commas:

I ate cereal and an apple for breakfast; a cheeseburger, fries, and a salad for lunch; and pasta with meatballs for dinner.