This. The pronoun this, referring to the complete sense of a preceding sentence or clause, can’t always carry the load and so may produce an imprecise statement.
| Visiting dignitaries watched yesterday as ground was broken for the new high-energy physics laboratory with a blowout safety wall. This is the first visible evidence of the university’s plans for modernization and expansion. | Visiting dignitaries watched yesterday as ground was broken for the new high- energy physics laboratory with a blowout safety wall. The ceremony afforded the first visible evidence of the university’s plans for modernization and expansion. |
In the left hand example above, this does not immediately make clear what the first visible evidence is.
Thrust. This showy noun, suggestive of power, hinting of sex, is the darling of executives, politicos, and speech writers. Use it sparingly. Save it for a specific application.
| Our reorganization plan has a tremendous thrust. | The piston has a five inch thrust. |
| The thrust of his letter was that he was working more hours than he’d bargained for. | The point he made in his letter was that he was working more hours than he’d bargained for. |
Tortuous. Torturous. A winding road is tortuous, a painful ordeal is torturous. Both words carry the idea of «twist,” the twist having been a form of torture.
Transpire. Not to be used in the sense of “happen,” “come to pass.” Many writers so use it (usually when groping toward imagined elegance), but their usage finds little support in the Latin “breathe across or through.” It is correct, however, in the sense of “become known.” “Eventually, the grim account of his villainy transpired” (literally, “leaked through or out”).
Try. Takes the infinitive: “try to mend it,” not “try and mend it.” Students of the language will argue that try and has won through and become idiom. Indeed it has, and it is relaxed and acceptable. But try to is precise, and when you are writing formal prose, try and write try to.
Type. Not a synonym for kind of. The examples below are common vulgarisms.
| that type employee I dislike that type publicity. | that kind of employee I dislike that kind of publicity. |
| small, home-type hotels a new type plane | small, homelike hotels a plane of a new design (new kind) |
