Student's Guide to Writing College Papers by Kate L. Turabian

Author:Kate L. Turabian
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226816333
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

14: Revising Sentences

14.1 Focus on the First Seven or Eight Words of a Sentence

14.1.1 Make Subjects Short and Concrete

14.1.2 Avoid Interrupting Subjects and Verbs with More than a Word or Two

14.1.3 Put Key Actions in Verbs, Not in Nouns

14.1.4 Put Familiar Information at the Beginning of a Sentence, New at the End

14.1.5 Avoid Long Introductory Phrases

14.1.6 Choose Active or Passive Verbs to Reflect the Previous Principles

14.1.7 Use First-Person Pronouns Appropriately

14.2 Diagnose What You Read

14.3 Choose the Right Word

14.4 Polish It Off

Your last big task is to make your sentences as clear as your ideas allow. On some occasions, you may know your writing is awkward, especially if you're writing about an unfamiliar and complex topic. But too often you won't recognize when your sentences need help. You need a plan to revise sentences that you know are a problem, but even more, you need a way to identify those that you think are fine, but that readers will think are not.

We can't tell you how to fix every problem in every sentence, but we can tell you how to deal with those that most often afflict a writer struggling to sound like a “serious scholar,” a style that most experienced readers think is just pretentious. Here is a short example:

1a. An understanding of terrorist thinking could achieve improvements in the protection of the public.

However impressive that sounds, the student who wrote it meant only this:

1b. If we understood how terrorists think, we could protect the public better.

To diagnose (1a) and revise it into (1b), however, you must know a few grammatical terms: noun, verb, active verb, passive verb, whole subject, simple subject, main clause, subordinate clause. If they're a dim memory, skim a grammar guide before you go on.

14.1 Focus on the First Seven or Eight Words of a Sentence

Just as the key to a clearly written report is in its first few paragraphs, so the key to a clearly written sentence is in its first few words. When readers grasp those first seven or eight words easily, they read what follows faster, understand it better, and remember it longer. It is the difference between these two sentences:

2a. The Federalists' argument in regard to the destabilization of government by popular democracy arose from their belief in the tendency of factions to further their self-interest at the expense of the common good.

2b. The Federalists argued that popular democracy destabilized government, because they believed that factions tended to further their self-interest at the expense of the common good.

In this section we will show you how to write a sentence like (2b)—or to revise one like (2a) into (2b).

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