Strong writing\u2014writing that moves, directs, and connects people\u2014conveys thoughts and ideas with clarity and efficiency. Badly placed words create vagueness and confusion; well-placed ones achieve logic and unity.<\/p>\n
Careful writers join elements that are related in thought and separate those that are not. Consider the following sentence:<\/p>\n
He noticed a glass on the table that was right in the middle.<\/em><\/p>\n Was the glass in the middle of the table, or was the table in the middle of others? Right now we can\u2019t be sure. Let\u2019s return to the sentence and revise it:<\/p>\n He noticed a glass that was right in the middle of the table.<\/em><\/p>\n Better-placed and -related elements give us greater understanding.<\/p>\n In writing for precision, we\u2019ll want to monitor where we are locating our modifiers. We should order them to express correct and clear relations.<\/p>\n Questionable Logic:<\/strong>\u00a0You can take the train and save twenty minutes in traffic en route to the Madonna concert for just three dollars.\u00a0<\/em>(Is the Madonna concert really three dollars?) Questionable Logic:\u00a0<\/strong>It was fun to see the marine life in the 500-gallon tank that the fishers had captured.\u00a0<\/em>(Did the fishers capture a 500-gallon tank?) Questionable Clarity:\u00a0<\/strong>I want to discuss the edit to the blueprint, which is delaying the timeline.\u00a0<\/em>(What is now delaying the timeline\u2014the edit or the blueprint?) Questionable Clarity:\u00a0<\/strong>She is Nutella d\u2019Angelica, the niece of Cruella de Vil bathing the Dalmatian.\u00a0<\/em>(Who is bathing the Dalmatian\u2014Nutella or Cruella? And is there another Cruella de Vil besides this one?) We also want to watch how we order words in sentences that depend on what we wish to express.<\/p>\n Examples<\/em><\/strong> Our goal as grammatical writers is to make statements and impressions that glide to and through readers\u2019 minds. By keeping related items together and placing them precisely in sentences, we make logic and unity persuasive partners in our mission to communicate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Strong writing\u2014writing that moves, directs, and connects people\u2014conveys thoughts and ideas with clarity and efficiency. Badly placed words create vagueness and confusion; well-placed ones achieve logic and unity. Careful writers join elements that are related in thought and separate those that are not. Consider the following sentence: He noticed a glass on the table that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBetter:\u00a0<\/strong>For just three dollars<\/u>, you can take the train and save twenty minutes in traffic en route to the Madonna concert.\u00a0<\/em>(Moving the prepositional phrase establishes a more plausible scenario.)<\/p>\n
\nBetter:<\/strong>\u00a0It was fun to see\u00a0the 500-gallon tank<\/u>\u00a0of marine life<\/u>\u00a0that the fishers had captured<\/u>.\u00a0<\/em>(Moving the identified elements makes a well-wed modifying relationship.)<\/p>\n
\nBetter:\u00a0<\/strong>I want to discuss\u00a0the blueprint edit<\/u>, which is delaying the timeline.\u00a0<\/em>(Adjusting the identified element better relates it to the sentence modifier starting with\u00a0which,<\/em>\u00a0leaving little doubt about the cause of the delay.)<\/p>\n
\nBetter:\u00a0<\/strong>She is\u00a0Cruella de Vil\u2019s niece<\/u>,\u00a0Nutella d\u2019Angelica<\/u>,\u00a0who is bathing the Dalmatian<\/u>.\u00a0<\/em>(Apposition of\u00a0niece<\/em>\u00a0and changing the participial phrase to a non-restrictive relative clause ensure the reader thinks once instead of twice.)<\/p>\n
\nAll of the team members were not there. (Or do we mean\u00a0Not all of the team members were there?<\/em>)
\nLatissa only spotted two typos. (Or do we mean\u00a0Latissa spotted only two typos?<\/em>)
\nThe executives gave their donations to the charity at the event. (Or do we mean\u00a0At the event, the executives gave their donations to the charity?\u00a0<\/em>We might also write\u00a0The executives at the event gave their donations to the charity.<\/em>)<\/p>\n