Polishing Your Prose by Steven M. Cahn

Author:Steven M. Cahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LAN028000, Language Arts & Disciplines/Style Manuals, LAN022000, Language Arts & Disciplines/Editing & Proofreading
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

The concept is the same one articulated earlier: mathematics should be restored to its proper place within the liberal arts. Therefore we ask: are both statements necessary? Would one be sufficient? If so, which one? And where should we put it?

To answer these questions, let’s go back to the start of the paragraph and reread the second sentence, which begins:

Mathematics is losing its foothold in the liberal arts program over the past decades.

We’ll worry about the sentence structure and wording later. Right now we recognize that the author is about to provide background that explains how and why mathematics has lost its place. What we must decide is whether to state his thesis at the start of the paragraph, then provide the history, or to provide the history first, then follow with the outcome of that series of events.

To resolve this dilemma, we turn to one of our ten basic principles: place the most dramatic material at the end of sentences. Here we expand that notion to whole paragraphs and decide to save the thesis statement for the end. Consequently we can eliminate it from the first sentence, and that action means that the entire first sentence disappears, including the second clause, which after our correction reads “that it is a subject to which non-majors should be exposed.” This concept will almost certainly be affirmed later: if not in these very words, then by inference.

Now the paragraph begins:

Mathematics is losing its foothold in the liberal arts program over the past decades with the disappearance of core requirements and the unfavorable attitude developed through a host of negative experiences suffered at the hands of academically incompetent lower school teachers.

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