174 / IMPROVE YOUR WRITTEN ENGLISH letters, 133–46 formal, 136–9, 142–3, 145 personal, 134–6, 141, 144 metaphors, 88–9 negatives, 91–2 nouns, 3–5, 77 abstract, 4–5 collective, 3–4 common/concrete, 3 proper, 3 novels, 8 objects, 6, 78–80 paragraphing, 43–6 passive voice, 91 personal statement, 149 personification, 89 person first, 7, 10 second, 8, 10 third, 7–8, 10 phrases, 25, 93 plagiarism, 100 play form, 50 plurals, 53–5 prepositions, 2, 8–9 profiles, 150–1 pronouns, 7–9 demonstrative, 9 interrogative, 9 personal, 7–9, 78 possessive, 69–70 relative, 24–5 prose, 89 punctuation, 32–40, 76 question marks, 39 quotation marks, 48–9, 100–1 referees, 157 reports, 111–15 semicolons, 37–8 sentences, 21–5, 83–4 short story, 105–7 similes, 88–9 spelling, 53–64, 80 style, 76–95 subjects, 6, 78–80 summary, 109–11, 115 synonyms, 65 tautology, 90–1 thesaurus, 65 titles, 5 topic sentences, 44–5 verbs, 10–17, 55, 77 active voice, 91 finite, 11 infinitive, 12, 14 intransitive, 11, 64 irregular, 14 non-finite, 12–14 passive voice, 91 participles, 13–16 present 13–15 past, 13–15 tenses