Danielle Cosimo

Danielle Cosimo
Danielle Cosimo is a Language Usage Analyst for WordRake. Before joining the team, she was a translator and editor for non-native English speakers applying to degree programs in the United States and the UK. Danielle is formally trained in linguistics and has a certificate in computer programming. She is fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. She applies her interdisciplinary knowledge to create WordRake’s editing algorithms.

Recent Posts

Balancing Prescriptive and Descriptive Grammar in Editing

Language and Status: An Introduction to Two Schools of Thought

Language and status are closely intertwined. The language choices you make reveal information about your identity, background, and the formality of the situation. Two schools of thought influence our decisions on whether language use is “correct” or “incorrect:” prescriptivism and descriptivism.

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Is that Adjective Eligible for an Upgrade?

Have you ever been told not to modify certain adjectives? This advice stems from a concept known as absolute adjectives. Grammarians believe modifying these adjectives is illogical and improper because, in their view, these adjectives cannot be reduced, enlarged, modified, or compared—they’re absolute. But many of these untouchable adjectives are often modified in daily usage. And that’s okay.

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Why Active Verbs Create Vigorous Sentences While Adjectives Drain Energy from Weak Verbs

Be verbs have earned a bad reputation for creating boring writing—but they’re not alone. Copula verbs (also known as linking verbs), which include be, seem, feel, become, and remain, also create bland sentences. Though these verbs can be useful, more often they’re just feeble verbs that attract wan adjectives and slow your sentences.

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Understanding Why Common Phrases Are Actually Redundant

It’s common writing advice: Avoid redundancies. Redundant writing dilutes our message, kills subtlety, and wastes space and time. The words you waste with redundant language could be better used for examples to support your ideas or details that drive your point home and make it memorable. But redundancies are hard to spot without thinking deeply about every word in every sentence.

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A Primer on Passive Voice: What It is, When to Use It, How to Fix it

Everyone remembers their high school English teachers admonishing them against using the dreaded passive voice. According to composition class lore, using passive voice was the chief writing sin—and avoiding it was the key to strengthening writing. If true, then two questions remain:

  1. What is passive voice, anyway? (Don’t worry: Even the most pedantic folks can get it wrong!)
  2. How do we re-write sentences to avoid passive voice? (What good is pointing out a writing ill without offering a writing cure?)

In this blog post, we’ll give you a refresher on passive voice, show you how to fix it, and explain the four times when passive voice is acceptable in your writing.

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Why So Many Words? Cut Nominalized Phrases to Spotlight Your Ideas and Arguments

Maybe you’ve heard folks complaining about how young people tend to verb their nouns—adulting comes to mind. These new word constructions come from the need to make a static thing dynamic. In the case of adulting, the fact of living an adult life isn’t just a state of being, but takes constant and active maintenance. Verbing your nouns shows this constant state of motion.

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Our Story

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WordRake founder Gary Kinder has taught over 1,000 writing programs for AMLAW 100 firms, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies. He’s also a New York Times bestselling author. As a writing expert and coach, Gary was inspired to create WordRake when he noticed a pattern in writing errors that he thought he could address with technology.

In 2012, Gary and his team of engineers created WordRake editing software to help writers produce clear, concise, and effective prose. It runs in Microsoft Word and Outlook, and its suggested changes appear in the familiar track-changes style. It saves time and gives confidence. Writing and editing has never been easier.