Sentence revision strategies
- 1. Jamie Flathers English 101.50 and 56, Fall 2019 1 Three Sentence Revision Strategies All good writers have one thing in common: they use the smallest possible number of words to get their points across. This should be your goal any time you sit down to write. With this in mind, here are three revision strategies to help you pare down your sentences. Remove Unnecessary Modifiers. A modifier is any word that changes the meaning of the word that comes after it (or sometimes before it). Adjectives modify nouns; adverbs modify verbs. Sometimes, modifiers help—you need them for description, for emphasis, etc. At other times, though, modifiers can bloat a sentence—they increase the word count without contributing meaning. You should remove these. Here’s a partial list of the most common unnecessary modifiers: so, just, really, very, actually, seriously, totally, literally Remove auxiliary verbs. Beware auxiliary verbs, also called “to be” or helping verbs: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, have, has, had. These verbs can’t convey action, but they’re often attached to verbs that do: “I was walking to the store,” for example. Unless you’re about to tell a story—“I was walking to the store when a unicorn pooped on my shoes . . .”—you should divorce the helping from the active verbs. Rather than saying, “I was walking,” say, “I walked.” Instead of saying, “I was going to have to,” say, “I would need.” Resist explaining the obvious. Many writers explain the obvious without realizing it. When they do, their sentences get bloated and tend to sound rambling. Consider the following example, from Purdue’s Online Writing Lab: I received your inquiry that you wrote about tennis rackets yesterday, and I read it thoroughly. Yes, we do have that model you wrote about. If an inquiry exists, someone obviously wrote it. If a person is responding, they obviously read it. If the inquiry was mentioned in the previous sentence, it doesn’t need to be mentioned again. Edited for the obvious, the example would look like this: I received your inquiry about tennis rackets. Yes, we do have that model. One more example, because this bears repeating:
- 2. Jamie Flathers English 101.50 and 56, Fall 2019 2 Imagine a mental picture of someone engaged in the intellectual activity of trying to learn what the rules are for how to play the game of chess. Can you imagine something that isn’t a mental picture? Do you really need to say that leaning chess is an intellectual activity? Edited for the obvious, the example would look like this: Imagine someone trying to learn the rules of chess.