In Characters, the fourth lesson of Style, Williams talks about understanding the importance of characters, including how to diagnose and revise characters, reconstruct absent characters, use abstractions as characters, when to use passive verbs, how to choose between active and passive, the “objective” passive, and passive characters and metadiscourse. Near the end of the chapter Williams teaches revision of long compound noun phrases, and finally sums up with how to use the professional voice. Williams explains that readers like reading clear prose. Clear prose comes when the subjects of sentences names characters and verbs name actions. The first step in diagnosing style is to look for main characters in the subject. To revise make those characters the subjects of verbs by naming their actions.
Next, Williams articulates that when dealing with absent characters and abstractions as characters, make the subjects of verbs tell a story and that will turn the abstraction into a character. When using passive voice (which is often the best choice, although most students were not taught this) make sure your readers know who is responsible for the action and ask yourself if the active or passive verb would help the reader move more smoothly from one sentence to the next. Therefore, use the passive voice when you do not know who did an action and your readers do not care, or when you do not want them to know. Also use the passive voice when you want to focus your readers attention on one or another character. Williams main point is that although some scholars believe using the first person is immature, when used correctly phrases with the first person, such as I believe, are entirely correct and in fact useful.
Lastly, Williams talks about rewriting lumpy compound noun phrases to make them more effective. Although some grammarians believe that writers should never modify one noun with another, that would role out several common phrases such as stone wall, brick house, and book bag. Reassemble overly wordy noun phrases by reversing the order of words and finding prepositions to connect them. Williams relates noun revision to the professional voice, clarifying that writing clearly is more important than writing professionally. Professional voice can rule out moderately well-educated readers, and must be revised for conciseness. Thus, do not make simple ideas more complex, and revise complex ideas by giving characters actions.