Grammar Moses: Be precise, but never stoop to unanimousness

Precision, if I haven't mentioned before, is your friend. There are few greater turnoffs for readers than vague, wishy-washy writing.

Make it visual. Put your reader in the place you're describing.

Take this sentence: "The offender left in a dark-colored vehicle."

That's just plain old lazy writing that paints a muddy picture, doesn't it?

Show of hands: Who thought we were writing about a parking meter vandal riding a brown unicycle? I can't be the only one.

My mother once described my dad's new car as having been painted "the color of death."

Mom was known to resort to hyperbole on occasion, but what I can describe only as midnight forest green was about as close to death as I can imagine. So hers was a description brimming with passion but bereft of detail.

Back to my point: We need to tell readers whether it was a car, a pickup truck, a motorcycle, a skateboard, a moped, a tricycle, a hovercraft or an X-wing Starfighter. Anything to start shaping a vision in your reader's mind.

Here is another irksome description:

So and so was "shot with a weapon multiple times."

All we know is that someone was shot more than once. But we don't know how many times or by what.

Was it a double tap behind the ear with a .22-caliber pistol, as you might find in a gangster movie? Was it someone cut in half by 300 shells from a Gatling gun, which was a cottage industry for Arnold Schwarzenegger?

If no one knows or can't give you an accurate count, even "few," "several" or "many" provides a little insight.

Without precise language, your reader is simply left to wonder ­and create her own reality - or get bored and stop reading.

What a -ness

Last year I was engaged in an online discussion about words with some editors and language fans.

The issue of -ity and -ness suffixes arose.

My argument was when you have perfectly good word such as "humility" or "civility," why would you want to use "humbleness" or "civilness"?

Both "humbleness" and "civilness" are words, though I can't remember anyone I know either writing or speaking them. Perhaps it's my lack of familiarity with them, but they seem clumsy. And that should be a sign that they'll be ineffective.

Leslie Hoffecker, a senior editor at Reingold Inc., countered "humbleness" would work well in some cases. "When profiling someone who was born rich but lost all her money, a writer might say something along the lines of 'The humbleness of her small apartment contrasted with the grandeur of the oceanside mansion where she grew up.'"

Clearly, "humility" would not work in that case. It is defined as a modest view of one's value or importance. So it would be difficult for a house to exhibit humility. Unless, perhaps, you lived in the Amityville Horror house. And then you're looking more at hostility than humility.

While Leslie's example works, I would argue "austerity" would have been a better word choice.

So, what about "unanimity?" I can't find a reputable dictionary that lists "unanimousness" as a word.

Thank goodness for that.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.