Finally, a New Year's resolution I can keep! For the record, I didn't loose the ten pounds I'd hoped to in 2009.

I recently heard a senior government official talking about a report he had authored and he stated, "The report contains only facts, no adjectives or adverbs." It got me thinking about accident reports, mine included. If we reduce the number of adverbs and adjectives we use it will force us to be more factual in our reporting.

A 2010 resolution that I will keep....

In 2010 I will use precise descriptive adjectives in my investigation reports and at the same time will substantially reduce the use of adverbs ending in "ly" as I just did.

Adverbs

An adverb can modify a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a phrase, or a clause. An adverb indicates manner, time, place, cause, or degree and answers questions such as "how," "when," "where," "how much". While some adverbs can be identified by their characteristic "ly" suffix, most of them must be identified by untangling the grammatical relationships within the sentence or clause as a whole. Unlike an adjective, an adverb can be found in various places within the sentence. In the following examples, the highlighted words are adverbs:

• The worker was last seen walking slowly across the compound.
• The cab of the truck is partially covered with a steel framework and could easily cause a person on the top of the cab to trip.

If our investigation concern was worker fatigue or impairment then the speed of the walking would need to be better described. Walking slowly as compared to what? In the case of the truck while a photograph would accurately depict the extent of the cab being covered, however, there's a need for the writer to better explain the thinking behind this statement.

Adjectives

An adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun by describing, identifying, or quantifying words. An adjective usually precedes the noun or the pronoun which it modifies. In the following examples, the highlighted words are adjectives:

• A battered tool box was found in the back of the tow truck.
• The kitchen floor was covered with a grease stained rug.

So while the use of adjectives helps paint a picture of the scene, from an investigation point of view they may leave some questions unanswered. If the condition of the tool box or the grease stained rug was important to our investigation then a better description is called for. What kind of damage was there to the tool box? Was the damage to the tool box recent? How much of the rug was covered by the grease stain? Did the grease stain play a part in the accident?

I'm not suggesting that we get rid of every adverb or adjective in our accident reports, but rather that we review our reports to see if there is an opportunity to better explain or describe the situation. In a recent investigation report I commented on an attachment on a vehicle being "approximately" five feet wide. The attachment was not critical to the incident, but in hindsight, I did mention it and therefore should have more accurately described it. (A check of the parts catalogue indicated the attachment was available in either a five foot or four and one-half foot length. So it was either five feet or it wasn't.)

The link below will take you to a site providing some basic grammar instruction and was the source of the definitions used in this article.

http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/partsp.html

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Investigation Kit

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