I, personally, use participles and subordinate (is this the word?) sentences too much. I have had three people pointing this out to me lately.
1. Editing a composition I wrote for school (in Greek) a few months ago, my teacher suggested that I should avoid using participles too much because they weaken the writing, and that I should cut my periods into smaller sentences.
2. My Spanish teacher has given me a 'tip' for writing in a foreign languages: "Write small sentences. You're less likely to committ grammar mistakes if you avoid conjunctions, participles and all these tricky thingies
3. The exact same was what I was told by my French teacher.
In Greek I've learned to follow it. But in the other languages... I just can't <shrug> I don't know why.
On the 'he smiled/sighed/laughed/etc. topic:
I think that using these words is better than using 'said' all the time. Personally, it annoys me to see the same word repeated several times, for whatever reason. I prefer using a varied vocabulary.
AnnaBtG.
