How to improve writing (no. 82)

From a New York Times article on funny stuff at the Friars Club:

Former staff members described questionable spending and sloppy bookkeeping, including a $160,000 loan to the executive director without interest that was never written down.

“To the executive director without interest that was never written down”: that’s an awfully clumsy string of sentence elements. Better:

Former staff members described questionable spending and sloppy bookkeeping, including an unrecorded interest-free $160,000 loan to the executive director.

When I read the news, I don’t go looking for things. They present themselves, and my sentence-repair alarm goes off. Elaine gets credit for “interest-free,” which she suggested when I read the sentence aloud.

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 82 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]