Clarity, Part 1

I chose four topics from Rules for Writers "clarity" section, and then related them back to my own writing.


1. Mixed constructions 

I've never heard this term before, but it is something that appears in writing all the time. For me, at least, this mostly happens when I'm editing. I will change the tense, the subject, or delete the prepositional phrase, and forget to rework the rest of the sentence. Usually, I realize it when I do a final check of my paper, but there have been times where I didn't catch it in time.

Image by McPhee, Nic. "I tend to scribble a lot". Uploaded 1/26/08 via Flickr.
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license. 

2. Variety

I have the opposite problem from a lot of writers in that most of my sentences are long and complex. It's difficult for me to use short sentences, because I usually have a lot to say about the topic.

I use semicolons more than probably any other person my age. They help me differ my sentence structures, and make me seem like a better writer than I am. Usually, I don't have any trouble with using a variety of sentence beginnings. Inverted sentences are probably the easiest way to change things up, especially in personal narrative type pieces when the inclination is to begin every sentence with "I".


3. Wordy sentences

Along with using complex sentences comes the possibility for wordiness (which is incidentally one of my favorite words). The temptation is to write more dense sentences because they sound more intelligent, but really, they are just distracting to read. It's something that I should work on, and the list on pages 157-158 will be super helpful.


4. Misplaced or dangling modifiers

This is probably the most complex chapter listed under the "clarity" section. I've never learned a lot about using modifiers in all of their forms. I should make a conscious effort to check my modifiers when I'm writing and editing to avoid confusing my readers.




Reflection

Jayni and Mehruba both did excellent jobs at explaining their controversies in fairly simple terms. I learned a lot from reading both that I was unaware of before! While they both had some sentences that were choppy or too complex, overall, both had great organization and needed little global editing.

Both QRGs had a few sentences that included the grammar issues that I wrote about for my "Clarity" blog post.

For example, Mehruba had a sentence that was too wordy to the extent that it became a run on sentence. She wrote, "this controversy opened up the issues women in the STEM field in general face and the ideologies previously practiced might be put under serious review to provide more of an equal playing ground for men and women scientists". This is an extremely easy mistake to make, especially when in the midst of writing. However, it's important to look for these things when editing.

Jayni had a sentence with a modifier where it was unclear which object it was referring to. She wrote,"To remediate this problem scientists isolated a gene from flounder’s DNA that allow them to not freeze, since they live in cold water". The use of the word "them" in this sentence is confusing. That's also something that is easier to catch in editing than in the middle of the writing process.

Overall, both Jayni and Mehruba did amazing jobs with their QRGs, and any of the suggestions I made were because as a third party, I'm a fresh set of eyes on the project. I know, for me at least, after writing a paper, I start to miss the mistakes, and instead read it how I know it should be read.

(P.S. I feel really mean calling out specific examples of their mistakes. Please don't think I'm a jerk, it's in the instructions for this blog post!!)