As an ESL coach at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism, Diane Nottle has made it her focus to help international journalists master reporting and writing. Her latest ESL blog entry, tackles the importance of using possessives to shorten and clarify writing.

Nottle writes real world examples of clunky sentences from her students, to model how replacing certain words with possessives can tighten and clean up the writing. To view her blog, click here.

If you are an international journalist looking for more writing tips, check out her block, here. For more in-depth writing assistance, for non-native reporters, check out Nottle’s soon to be released book, American English For World Media, which is being being published through CUNY’s Journalism Press. Nottle is a former editor with the New York Times, who has taught English abroad in different countries including China and Poland.