[Grammar] Article 2 - Writing Effective Sentences

[TalonRider]

WRITING EFFECTIVE SENTENCES

 

Effective writing emphasizes important information and ideas in sentences by making them obvious to the reader.

 

Ways to emphasize ideas

• Put ideas at the beginning or ending of a sentence.
  

• Education remains, in spite of its shortcomings, the most important single means of economic advancement.
  

• Arrange items logically in order of either increasing or decreasing importance.
  

• The hurricane knocked down several trees in town, tore the roofs of several buildings, and killed nine people.
  
• Increased efficiency, a larger sales force, and improved products---these are the goals for this year.
  

• Carefully repeat key words and phrases.
  

• We have the tools, all the tools---we are suffocating in tools---but we cannot find the actual wood to work or even the actual hand to work it. Archibald MacLeish
  

• Set off important ideas with punctuation
  

• Basketball---that is, winning basketball games---is an extremely profitable university operation.
  

• Use the active voice.
  

• Passive: For energy conservation, it is urged that all lights be turned off when not in use.
  
• Active: To save energy, students should turn off all lights they are not using.
  

• Write concisely.
  

• Weak: In my opinion, the competition in the area of grades is distracting. It distracts many students from their goal, which is to obtain an education that is good.
  
• Strong: The competition for grades distracts many students from their goal of obtaining a good education
  

• Make comparisons logical and complete.
  

• Illogical: Los Angles is larger than any city in California.
  

• Los Angles is itself a city in California, the sentence seems to say that Los Angles is larger than itself.
  

• Logical: Los Angles is larger than any other city in California.
  

• Make sure that items in a comparison or a list all have the same grammatical construction.
  

• Faulty Parallelism:
  
• Formerly, accounts were submitted bi-weekly, while now they are accepted once a month.
  
• Corrected Comparison:
  
• Formerly, accounts were submitted bi-weekly; now they are submitted monthly.
  
• Faulty Parallelism:
  
• I like to drive my car better than my husband.
  
• Corrected Comparison:
  
• I like to drive my car better than my husband's.
  
• Vary the beginnings of your sentences throughout a piece of writing.
  

Begin with a descriptive phrase.

 

Caution: What follows the comma must be what the descriptive phrase describes.

• Illogical: Covered on blue paint, the home-improvement accident made Eva laugh anyway.
  

• Logical: Covered in blue paint, Eva laughed despite the home-improvement accident.
  

Edited March 11, 2007 by TalonRider

[Bondwriter]

Basketball that is, winning basketball games is extremely profitable university operation.

 

Not exactly on topic, but shouldn't the comma be used as brackets to emphasize the idea, as it would be orally?

 

Basketball, that is winning basketball games (,) is extremely profitable university operation.

[TalonRider]

Basketball that is, winning basketball games is extremely profitable university operation.

 

Not exactly on topic, but shouldn't the comma be used as brackets to emphasize the idea, as it would be orally?

 

Basketball, that is winning basketball games (,) is extremely profitable university operation.

After reading this, I went back and looked at the material I'm using. I edited my post so that the sentence reads like this: Basketball---that is, winning basketball games---is an extremely profitable university operation.

 

Thanks Bondwriter

 

Jan

[Lugh]

Faulty Parallelism:

--- I like to drive my car better than my husband.

Corrected Comparison:

--- I like to drive my car better than my husbands.

 

The 'Corrected Comparison' is still incorrect.

 

'Husbands' is plural at the end of the sentence; it should be possessive. Once it is possessive, it needs something to possess; therefore, you should use the grammatical balance rule. Thus corrected, it should read:

 

I like to drive my car better than I like to drive my husband's car.

 

OR (depending on intended meaning)

 

I like to drive my car better than my husband does.

 

Although, to be honest, I would totally rewrite the sentence using a stronger verb than "like".

[TalonRider]

Thanks for point out the error. It should have been husband's.

 

I checked the document I used and all errors pointed out are not present, but for some reason, when copied and pasted here, those came up missing.

 

My apologies for the confusion.

 

It is good to see that someone is paying attention.

 

Jan

[Razor]

Lugh, in the sentence you refer to, "than my husband's" is actually an elliptical dependant clause, which will be talked about later. There are words left out, which is why it's elliptical. The first question you'd ask, given that a clause contains a noun and a verb, is why that is a clause at all since there's no verb. Parts of this clause, due to the way we speak and write, are understood. The entire clause is "than I like to drive my husband's car".

 

An example: Bill is tall. Bill is taller than Mike. "than Mike" is an elliptical clause. The entire sentence would read "Bill is taller than Mike is tall."

 

That will be explained better later, but where I'm going with this is that I would just rephrase that sentence because of the possibility that it could be misinterpreted. You could also be wondering why "than" can introduce a dependant clause since it's not a relative pronoun, but subordinate conjunctions are also capable of the same feat and there's a bunch of those lil devils. So basically, you were completely and totally correct in that first rephrasing you did. I was just explaining in depth why the other is technically correct, but still very awkard and should be avoided.

 

 

 

 

 

Bondwriter, in answer to your question, this is the sentence you wrote.

 

Basketball that is, winning basketball games is extremely profitable university operation.

 

This is a good example of a sentence which I would rephrase because of how awkward it is. A good rule to follow is that even if it is technically grammatically correct, if you have to seriously think about it, then rephrase it. Chances are your reader will have to seriously think about it, too. If you'll look back into article 1, there's a list of pronouns whose job is to introduce dependant clauses. The word that is a relative pronoun, which is able to introduce a dependant clause. Therefore, "that is winning basketball games" is a dependant clause. In speaking, a comma denotes pause. Logically, you would place a comma within that to mimic normal speech. It would read "that is, winning basketball games".

 

This is a shining example of things we haven't covered yet, but will soon. Your sentence will read as follows.

 

Basketball, that is, winning basketball games, is an extremely profitable university operation.

 

",that is, winning basketball games," is a dependant clause because it has a verbal which acts as a subject (winning basketball games) and a verb (is), and is introduced by a relative pronoun (that). It is also an entire group of words which functions as ONE sentence element. The universal rule of the universe states that you call it what it acts like, not what it looks like. That clause looks like a giant clump of words, but to me it looks like it's an appositive adjective modifying basketball. There's also a big rule about how many commas should be in a sentence. You could take out that comma after is and make it much easier on the eyes, and make it work with the comma rule. So then, it would just be plain old "Basketball, that is winning basketball games, is an extremely profitable university operation." That is a relative pronoun, followed by is which is a verb, followed by winning basketball games which is a gerund (a type of verbal acting as a noun). Complete dependant clause, right?

 

That most likely made absolutely no sense at all, because we haven't covered it yet. The next thing we'll do is sentence elements, then we'll talk about verbals (which are words that look like verbs but are NOT verbs, the tricky lil buggers), and stop in for a bit to look at clauses. At that point, this entire tirade should look incredibly simple to you. Until then, I think I might as well be speaking Greek, because I'm not explaining everything in detail.

 

The next article, on sentence elements, should be up very soon. It's got some tough stuff in it, probably the toughest stuff I think everyone should know, but it's so useful it's unreal.

 

Bondwriter, the short answer is the corrected version of that sentence, but if you actually care to jump ahead and understand what I mumbled on about up there, feel free to ask me to explain it better.

[EMoe57]

Hey everybody! Nice workshop. I'll be checking in when I can.

 

I checked the document I used and all errors pointed out are not present, but for some reason, when copied and pasted here, those came up missing.

 

I've noticed there is a *minor* problem in the forums when I edit a post. If I choose "quick edit", it will strip out the quotes/apostrophes when its saved. I always "full edit" instead. Has anybody else noticed that?

 

I just did a Quick Edit on this post and this is what it looked like before I went back and fixed it:

I've noticed there is a *minor* problem in the forums when I edit a post. If I choose "quick edit", it will strip out the quotes/apostrophes when its saved. I always “full edit” instead. Has anybody else noticed that?

Ah, now that I examined the results, I see that anything I write in Word and then copy over works fine until the Quick Edit tries to interpret it. That