Style: Write powerful, elegant sentences. 1-9

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Writers strive to write powerful, clear sentence. That's what this nine-part series is all about. Much of the advice given here can be found in Style, by Joseph Williams, advice like get to the subject quickly and its verb and the verb's object. You can then follow that with dependent clauses and phrases.

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Category:

Education

Tags:

• style
• grammar
• sentences
• structure
• powerful
• elegant
• joseph
• williams
• clear
• concise

[poeticmurder911]

When you correct the stringy sentence ---wouldn't "eventually" be unnecessary? "When the bottom wore through" is the same as saying eventually, when something happened is really the same as putting eventually, that adverb can be killed IMO.

[architectus777]

@poeticmurder911 For the sake of flow, it's sometimes best to use a transitional word, which is what eventually is doing; otherwise, it reads choppy.

[VelvetWind8]

Do these rules also apply when actual characters are speaking? Like when a certain dialect is being used, do we also have these rules, or is it only for narration and regular sentences, or both.

[architectus777]

@VelvetWind8 You still want to write elegant sentences, but to write elegant dialog is tricky. It really is like a whole different talent than writing a story. What you don't want is for dialog to be too realistic, but you do want to give the illusion the dialog is natural while delivering great dialog. Quitin Tarrantino is one of the best when it comes to dialog, IMO. 

[babelloyd2]

"Too heavy to carry, we dragged the bag..." is incorrect grammar. If you write that, you're saying that "we" were to heavy to carry. It's the same as this: "Scratching each other playfully, we watched the monkeys at the zoo."

Also, "Since" means to things: "because" and "in the time that has elapsed". "Because" only means "because". It's usually best to use the words has the fewest meanings. This makes your writing clear, direct, and fast to read.

wordwise dot ca

[architectus777]

@babelloyd2 In your post, "to" should be "too" and in another place it should be "two." Besides that, you are correct. However, I didn't offer that sample sentence in this video. Rather it is Because the bag was too heavy to carry, we dragged it. This is correct.

[ikarai1]

Thanks :)

[somor98]

Starting a sentence with "Because" does not seem very elegant to me. Im a foreigner. But still!

[axisofpeter]

@babelloyd2 Yes, I knew mine was correct, as I teach English. I agree completely about the "universal curse." I constantly find typos and oversights in my own course materials. I'm therefore able to sympathize with student errors.

[babelloyd2]

@axisofpeter : Yes, that's correct. That would mean "We were finding it too heavy to carry". It's a universal curse: any time a person offers grammatical advice, there will be a grammatical error in the advice, as happen in my initial post above.