Writing course assignment( letter and memorandum)

Unit/Week 3

Writing Clearly: Introduction to the Grammar and

Conventions of ‘Standard Written English’

Objectives:

• To encourage you to develop a critical self-awareness of your writing practice • To understand the distinction between grammatical ‘conventions’ and ‘rules’ • To understand the notion of ‘Standard Written English’ • To articulate some basic revision principles answering the question “How can I ensure

that my document as a whole will clearly communicate my intended message?”

Read: Locker/Findlay, Chapter 3 and Appendix ‘A’; (see also Canadian Writer’s Handbook [“CWH”], Part I, chapters 1 and 2)

Diagnostic Paper due by 11:55 p.m. Sunday Week 3.

Discussion Topic: apply the principles articulated in the Unit 3 Lecture notes to the following example. Post a revised version, and explain why you made the changes you did.

“In spite of the fact that the educational environment is a very significant facet to each and every one of our children, some groups do not support reasonable and fair tax assessments that are required for providing an educational experience at a high level of quality.”

Overview of Unit 3:

In this Unit, after an initial discussion of ‘conventions’ and ‘rules,’ we will concentrate primarily on issues raised by Chapter 3 in our text. Those issues have to do with clarity in writing. What qualities make your writing a) easy to read and b) consequently most effectively communicate your message to your reader? In considering these questions, we will begin to define and work with two basic concepts: Coherence and Cohesion. We will be considering those concepts at three levels:

§ Clarity of message in an entire document § Clarity of message within and between paragraphs § Clarity of message within sentences

First, a few working definitions to set the following discussion in context. Note that I am making certain assumptions here and throughout, which ignore the debates which can rage (in linguistics) around these various topics! Nevertheless, there is broad consensus on the following:

§ We can make an elementary distinction with reference to any given language between its spoken and written forms; the grammatical patterns of the former are inherently much ‘looser’ (with respect to the ‘rules’) than the latter, which tends to be much more ‘conservative’ in nature

§ In writing, we lose the extra-verbal communicative resources (gesture, facial expression, intonation, and so on) which we freely use in speech to help communicate, clarify, and supplement our meaning. Once a piece of writing is ‘turned loose’, it becomes an ‘object’ which must, all else being equal, clearly articulate its meaning to a reader on its own. We’re not there, typically, with our ‘reader’ to answer the question “What do you mean by this?”!!!!!

§ Many languages, typically those which exist in both spoken and written forms, have a ‘standard’ form which discourse communities (groups of people who habitually use a given language as a ‘first’ language) for that language will recognize, even if and where their use deviates from that ‘standard’. The concept applies to both spoken and written English, but most importantly to the latter. Typically, a conception of ‘Standard English’ will be heavily shaped by the rules and conventions of ‘Standard Written English.’ The rules and conventions of Standard Written English vary slightly between regions (e.g. Canada, the U.S., Britain, continental India, etc.) but the differences are not significant compared to the dialectal differences between different varieties of spoken English. The rules and conventions of Standard Written English are those set out, for example, in Appendix ‘A’ of our textbook, or in any typical ‘handbook’ used in university writing courses.

§ Standard Written English is one among many spoken and written dialects of English. It is not inherently ‘superior’ to any other dialect; it is just ‘different’. Its significance (and, some would argue, its value) inheres in the word ‘standard’: it is a form of English ‘readable’ by any literate user of English, regardless of her/his ‘native’ dialect. It is also ‘artificial’ in the best sense of that word: it is a form of English which can be learned, and used, relatively easily by any native speaker of English, or indeed someone who has learned English as a second language, regardless of his/her native dialect of the language.

§ A ‘dialect’ is simply a variety of a language – English, for our purposes – which can be described in terms of ‘non-standard’ words, expressions, and to a limited extent minor grammatical variations, the use of which are characteristic of a group of speakers belonging to a ‘speech community’ defined by geographical and/or sociological boundaries. So, for example, in Canada we can certainly recognize a ‘Newfoundland’ dialect which is very distinct when considered in relation to ‘standard Canadian English’.

‘Conventions’ and ‘Rules’

At page 63 of your text, Locker/Findlay have a short section titled ‘Evaluating “Rules” About Writing.’ In that section, the authors suggest that ‘rules’ in this context fall into three

broad categories. The first they refer to as rules which are “grammatical conventions.” These are the kinds of rules discussed in more detail in Appendix ‘A’. The second category consists of rules derived from organizational culture and practice (we might call these ‘in-house’ rules). The third consists of what we might refer to broadly as matters of stylistic expectation to do with matters such as tone, level of formality, and so on.

For now, I would like to spend a few moments on “grammatical conventions”. The language used by Locker/Findlay here can be a little misleading. It is true that in one sense the requirement, in English, that each sentence must have a subject and a verb is ‘conventional’ if we mean by ‘conventional’ to refer to the fact that in many other languages a sentence can be ‘grammatical’ without one or the other. It is also true that in certain contexts, what we would call ‘sentence fragments’ are accepted and used. For example, in a resume you would typically use fragments, often in the form of ‘bullet’ points, to describe significant things you did in a particular job (see e.g. Locker/Findlay Figure 13.6 at page 331), but would not do so in the letter of application to which that resume might be attached; to do so would be to violate your reader’s expectations with respect to your letter’s style.

However, it is further true that a group of words that does not contain both a subject and a verb is not, in English, a sentence in the grammatical sense – it is ‘not English’ when considered from the point of view of the grammatical structure of the language. Similarly, in English the requirement that subjects and verbs ‘agree’ with each other (‘she walks’ not ‘she walk’) is not “just” conventional, but rather a part of the grammatical structure of the language.

So, we need to make some distinctions when talking about “grammatical rules”. Here’s a useful typology. By a ‘rule’ of grammar we can mean one of three things:

• Real rules: the basic structural rules and principles of English (or of any language); the rules that make English ‘English’, and not Spanish, or Mandarin. These apply in both the spoken and written forms of any given language

• Conventional rules: ‘rules’ of grammar or usage which have established themselves, over time, so effectively that they do define – for many, perhaps most – what is, or is not ‘Standard English’. These ‘rules’ – and an awareness of them – are especially important for writers. Usually, these ‘rules’ have their origins in either a) preserved ‘real’ rules which have, in the everyday speech of most speakers, fallen away but which are still preserved in ‘standard’ forms of the language, and especially in writing, or b) ‘invented’ rules (see below) which have become so well established that most speakers and writers, especially those who have had access to post-secondary education, unconsciously observe them most of the time in speech, and always in writing

• Invented rules: ‘rules’ which have literally been ‘invented’, especially in and since the eighteenth century, by ‘grammarians’, teachers, and others in authority who have

‘opinions’ about what constitutes ‘good’ English! We can subdivide invented rules into two kinds: folklore, and options.1

As you read and work through the material contained in Appendix ‘A’ in our text, you will mostly encounter real and conventional rules as they apply to (and define!) Standard Written English.

Real rules are the rules that make English ‘English’. For example, English has a grammatical rule that requires that a determiner (look it up!) precede its noun. That’s why “The cat sat on the mat” is a grammatical English sentence in every sense of the word, whereas “Cat the sat mat the on” is NOT! Notice that my ‘bad’ sentence also violates another rule: in English, prepositions (‘on’) usually precede their object (‘the mat’); many languages use postpositions – not English.

Conventional rules are different. The real grammatical rules of any language are not consciously – in any coherent sense – ‘created’; rather, they develop, evolve, and function over long periods of time outside the consciousness of individual speakers of a language. As noted above, conventional rules are different precisely because they originate either as ‘invented’ rules or in an attempt by speakers to preserve what was a ‘real’ rule that is falling into disuse.

Nevertheless, these rules do become ‘conventional’ and part of the ‘standard’ language. Here’s an example: in standard English, we have ‘rules’ against both double negation and the double comparative/superlative. So, we most of us perceive the sentence ‘I don’t got no gun’ as non-standard. NOTE: ‘non-standard’ does NOT mean ‘sub-standard’; rather, to say that a sentence is not ‘standard English’ is simply to point out that its grammar or diction (word choice) or both somehow depart from the ‘standard’ language. For example, a speaker from the Southern U.S. might well speak in a dialect (variety) of English in which double negation is still ‘standard’, and in fact use double negation in informal conversation, but then ‘code-switch’ to Standard English patterns (‘I don’t have a gun’) in writing and/or in more ‘formal’ speech contexts (e.g. a job interview). Similarly, the sentences ‘My car is more better than yours’ or ‘My car is the most best car’ are non-standard because they violate the ‘rule’ against the double comparative/superlative: we expect ‘My car is better than yours’ or ‘My car is the best car’.

1 The typology used here to characterize different kinds of grammatical ‘rules’ is drawn from Joseph Williams’ Style: 10 Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Cdn. Ed. Williams and Ira B. Nadel, Longman: Toronto, 2005). Several of the examples used here, and in the two ‘supplements’ accompanying these lecture notes, are also drawn from this text, as is some of the stylistic terminology. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in improving her or his writing style.

But here’s the point! Both of these ‘rules’ were – literally – invented in the eighteenth century by ‘grammarians’ and teachers, and both were based on false assumptions about usage in English! Until around/after 1700, both double negation and the double comparative/superlative were ‘standard’, and always had been. You will find both common in Shakespeare. Speakers and writers used them freely, to add emphasis to the point being made. In other words, ‘I do not have a gun’ was a neutral statement of fact; ‘I don’t got no gun’ was a way of emphasizing the importance of that fact in a particular context. The ‘grammarians’ overlooked this function, and ruled against double-negation on logical grounds (a second negation of a verb cancels the first and results in an affirmative statement) and against the double comparative/superlative on the ground that it is a form of redundancy.

In this sense, both of these ‘rules’ have no foundation in either English grammar in the ‘real’ sense or in usage, yet they have become accepted as markers of what constitutes ‘good’ English – for better or worse. Consequently, we as writers cannot ignore the ‘conventional’ rules in our writing, precisely because our readers have an expectation that we will know and follow those kinds of rules, just as they expect us to write (or say) ‘the cat’ and not ‘cat the’. Further, let’s suppose we use a double negation in a formal report; our reader(s) will almost certainly ‘hear’ this as ‘wrong’, and may well draw (however unjustifiably) certain inferences from the presence of that solecism. For example, they might conclude that we are sloppy, indifferent, un- (or under-) educated, sarcastic, flippant – the possibilities are endless!

Other conventional rules derive from attempts to preserve a ‘real’ rule that is in the process of changing. As an aside, we can note here that this reflects a basic linguistic fact: the grammar of speech is always changing at a faster rate than the grammar of the written form of a language, which is inherently conservative. Here’s an example of this kind of conventional rule. In Standard English, and especially in Standard Written English, we make a distinction between the Subject and Object forms of personal pronouns. So, for example, we have the forms ‘she’ and ‘her’ in the third-person; we use the form ‘she’ as Subject (of the verb), as in ‘She walked the dog’, and the form ‘her’ as Object of a verb or of a preposition, as ‘The dog walked her’ or ‘They gave the book to her’. We refer to these grammatical attributes as ‘case’ (the subjective and objective cases).

Now, this can in fact be troublesome; do we say/write ‘Jane and me went to the interview’ or ‘Jane and I went to the interview’? Standard English requires the latter, and most of us would in fact say (let alone write) it this way, but there are many who would use the former in conversation but the latter in writing. What is not in doubt is that English in general, and certainly all varieties of Standard English, still obeys this ‘real’ rule of English grammar.

The English pronoun ‘who’ also has Subject/Object forms – but here the distinction (and the consequent ‘real’ rule) IS breaking down. Simply put, the Objective form ‘whom’ IS falling out of use, most noticeably in speech, and increasingly in writing – even in formal contexts. Reason? We just don’t need this distinction in order to clearly communicate our meaning.

Suppose your phone rings; I would guess that next to none of you would say “To whom am I speaking?”!! All or certainly most of you would say (as I would) “Who am I speaking to?” I hear – and probably most of you hear – the former as sounding stuffy, hyper-formal, yet it is in fact ‘grammatically correct’ in the sense that it does conform to the real rules surrounding ‘who/whom’. And here we have an example of a conventional rule that presents us, as writers, with a stylistic ‘option’. If we are writing to/for someone who prides her/himself on being a ‘stickler’ for ‘correct’ English, we might want to observe the who/whom distinction! On the other hand, if not, virtually no one in North America is either going to notice or comment on the fact that we’ve quietly dropped ‘whom’ from our vocabulary! It all depends on ‘audience’!!

Notice too in the above example that I ended a sentence a preposition with! This violates another ‘real’ rule which does derive from the deep linguistic structure of English: the language uses prepositions, as noted earlier, as opposed to the ‘postpositions’ used by some other languages – Japanese, for example. Prepositions are words used to attach nouns (their objects) either to another noun in a sentence, or to a verb. The preposition together with its object noun forms a prepositional phrase, which always functions to modify the noun or verb it is attached to. So, for example, in the sentence “She ran into the house,” ‘into the house’ is a prepositional phrase modifying the verb ‘ran’ – it is an adverbial modifier. In the sentence “The capital of Canada is Ottawa,” ‘of Canada’ is a prepositional phrase modifying the noun ‘capital’ – it is an adjectival modifier.

English grammar requires a preposition to be placed immediately before its object, but since 1900, and especially in speech, this rule has been ‘relaxing.’ Hence, our example above or this one, ‘That’s who I’m talking about,’ which is a ‘relaxed’ form of this: ‘That is the person about whom I am talking.’ I think you’ll agree that the ‘real’ version would certainly sound hyper-formal, even awkward, even in writing, and is certainly almost unthinkable (now) in speech!

As you work through the material (and relevant exercises) in Appendix ‘A,’ then, keep these conceptual distinctions in mind. Having said that, also remember that the ‘rules’ discussed in Appendix ‘A’ are typically those rules of grammar which do, in a real sense, define ‘Standard Written English.’ They are the ‘rules’ to which your writing in this course, for example, will be expected to conform. I also hope to demonstrate, through discussion of the more significant of these rules in the two sets of supplemental notes accompanying this lecture, that ‘learning’ them (if necessary) will in fact help you, ultimately, communicate more effectively in your writing, simply because observing these rules will make your sentences clearer.

In the rest of this discussion, however, I want to turn to ‘clarity’ in writing more broadly conceived: what general principles can we keep in mind when drafting a document which will help ensure that we communicate clearly and effectively? The rest of this Unit’s discussion supplements the substantive matters addressed in Locker/Findlay Chapter 3.

Writing Clearly: Coherence and Cohesion at ‘Document’ (and ‘Paragraph’) Level

Under this heading, we will begin to articulate some basic principles that attempt to answer the question: “How can I ensure that my document as a whole will clearly communicate my intended message?”

First, and foremost, you need a ‘thesis’ – a ‘controlling idea’ which provides a specific FOCUS both for you, as you first compose and then revise a document, and (as or more important) for your READER. Think back to the ‘rhetorical triangle’: you are trying to communicate a message to a reader for a specific purpose; if that purpose is not clearly articulated in and through the words that comprise that message, you’ve failed in your purpose whatever it may be! Again thinking back to Aristotelian rhetoric for a moment, classical rhetorical theory describes a ‘thesis’ in any practical argument (whether informative, argumentative, or problem-solving) as an ‘enthymeme’. While we will elaborate on this model later in the course, you could begin to think of this in this way: in anything you write, there should be present, somewhere, in a form clearly apparent to your reader, a statement or proposition (not necessarily in so many words) of the following form:

‘You should believe/do/not do/accept/reject X

Because

Reasons (1, 2, 3 – however many are required), supported by Evidence’

I said just now that this proposition, which is the ‘controlling idea’ governing the content and structure of the entire document, need not be stated ‘in so many words’; the point is that a statement of this kind must either be clearly articulated or at the least easily deducible by your reader(s).

Hint: when you’ve finished working on a draft of any document, and you think you’ve got it in ‘final’ form, go back and see if your overall discussion either contains (and conforms to) such a proposition, or at the least conforms to such a proposition that is implicitly present and that would be readily apparent, through that implicit presence, to any reader.

This requirement applies equally to documents which are purely informative and those that contain a stronger persuasive (an argument, a proposal) element: in either case, the absence of a clear, workable, controlling idea will inevitably result in problems with coherence.

So, let’s look at an example of what would be an informative topic, and develop a thesis out of it. Suppose the topic is the interaction between people and wild animals living in close proximity to one another. The topic by itself is not enough, simply because it does not in and of itself provide a focus for a discussion. We need to take that topic, and develop a statement that will say something significant about it, and help us generate a framework for that

discussion that will enable us to make it coherent. So, a possible ‘informative’ thesis (for an essay, or a paragraph) might be:

“The spread of the suburbs has created new habitats for wild

animals that can adapt to living near people, such as coyotes,

raccoons, and Canada geese.”

Notice how this focuses the subject by narrowing it, and suggests a string of sub-topics for paragraphs, each of which in turn will then CLEARLY relate to, and be a development of, the thesis; for example:

n the spread of suburbs n where/how are suburbs creating new habitats, n and for what kinds of animals n how do these animals adapt to living near people n how do people adapt to living near/with these animals n what are some of the consequences of this interaction? n what are some of the problems arising from those consequences?

Or, we could switch things up and create a persuasive thesis from this same topic:

“Many communities are finding the presence of large numbers of

Canada geese more than a nuisance. The question is, what can be

done about the problem? Various communities have tried different

methods for reducing the numbers of geese – some have even

resorted to slaughter. I will argue that even if their first efforts were

unsuccessful, communities should continue to develop methods for

discouraging Canada geese instead of killing them.”

Again, we’ve focused the subject, and suggested a string of sub-topics for paragraphs:

n history/description of community reaction n examples of above n focus: slaughter examples n why not slaughter? n examples of the various methods to discourage/reduce numbers n evidence for possibility of success with discouragement n effective enough to make slaughter unnecessary n conclusion reinforcing thesis

Now, we need to carry this basic principle into the development of paragraphs. Again, we can articulate a basic principle at this level:

Each paragraph needs its own ‘thesis’ or controlling idea (traditionally, the ‘topic sentence’) to generate focus, coherence, and unity both within and between the several paragraphs that constitute an entire document.

The easiest way to see this at work is through an example. Here’s an example of a very short (‘around’ 250 words), cohesive, coherent ‘essay’ with a strong thesis/controlling idea, and strong paragraphing controlled by that thesis:

“The metaphor of the ‘Information Superhighway,’ popularized by Al Gore in the 1990’s, sprang from a long-standing American myth about the freedom of the open road. Throughout the twentieth century the personal car/truck represented freedom of action – not just the pleasures of driving around aimlessly for recreation but the possibility of exploring new territories and reaching the frontier. When talking about the Internet, both Republicans and Democrats in the 1990’s invoked the idealized highway of the American imagination – the highway that leads to the frontier.

Exploration of the frontier is linked to democracy in this rhetoric. From Thomas Jefferson onward, American leaders have maintained that good roads are a prerequisite to democracy. By the end of the nineteenth century, good roads were the people’s answer to the hated railroad monopolies depicted by Frank Norris in The Octopus. With good roads farmers could transport their crops directly to local markets and competitive railheads. When the Interstate system was proposed, it was advanced as a means of connecting the nation, stimulating the economy, and eliminating poverty in Appalachia and other regions that lacked good roads.

The ‘Information Superhighway’ metaphor THUS associated the economic prosperity of the 1950’s and 1960’s facilitated by new highways with the potential for vast amounts of commerce to be conducted over the Internet.”

Notice, in this example:

n The repetition of central terms/phrases/motifs >> readers can track development of ideas within/between paragraphs AND, always, BACK to the thesis.

n The internal development: the relationship between ‘Info. Superhighway’ and ‘frontier myth’ in 1st paragraph leads to ‘frontier myth’ to ‘roads’ to ‘(free market) economy’ in 2nd paragraph, which leads (back) to ‘Info. Superhighway’ to the ‘new (virtual) economy/new (virtual) highway’ in 3rd paragraph.

n The superimposition of another organizational pattern: chronological. The exposition begins in the near-present, moves back to the distant past

(eighteenth century), then forward first to the early twentieth century, mid- twentieth century, late twentieth century, then the present and, finally, anticipates future developments. Again, the point of doing this (it is deliberate) is to create a structure the reader can follow, so that she/he stays on track with the discussion.

The net result, here, is both coherence (within each paragraph and within the document as a whole), and cohesion (each paragraph is clearly related to each other paragraph and to the document as a whole). Locker/Findlay Chapter 3 will provide some further discussion on these principles, and we will continue to look at and develop them through discussion in subsequent Units in relation to different kinds of document, and in responses to and comments on your assignments. Now, let’s close this discussion with an introduction to some of the common problems with clarity at sentence-level. Writing Clearly: Sentence-Level Problems

As noted in the first section of this Unit, you can find discussion of the common grammatical (and related punctuation problems, which are for our purposes part of ‘grammar’) and structural problems affecting sentences – ‘sentence-level problems’ – in the two Supplements to this lecture. For now, though, let’s begin by looking at one of the most common causes of ‘unclear sentences’: the tendency to overuse the passive voice and/or ‘weak’ verbs. We can articulate a general rule: use the active voice, and use ‘active verbs’ wherever possible. What does that mean?

Use the active voice where possible, unless you’ve a good reason to use the passive.

By ‘active voice’ we are referring not to the fact that something ‘sounds active as opposed to passive’ but rather to a grammatical attribute of transitive verbs (verbs that take a direct object) in English. Here’s a simple example of a sentence with a transitive verb in the active voice (I like stupid simple examples!):

The dog bit the cat.

Let’s analyze this sentence. It’s transitive because the verb ‘bite’ here takes a direct object (the cat), who is the recipient of the action of ‘biting.’ The ‘doer’ of the action is ‘the dog’, who is also the grammatical subject of the verb, and a character (person, animal, thing, even familiar concept) capable of performing that action. Oddly enough, (survey shows that!) most readers have a strong preference for sentences in which actions are expressed in verbs (more on this in a moment), and performed by ‘characters’ who are the grammatical subjects of such verbs. Our example sentence conforms precisely to this very real ‘reader expectation’.

However, because the verb is transitive, we can take our sentence and transform it into the passive voice:

The cat was bitten by the dog.

Notice what happens. What was the direct object – the recipient of the action of biting – now becomes the grammatical subject. What was the grammatical subject, the character doing the action of biting, is now the object of a preposition (‘by’) – our poor dog has had her grammatical status ‘reduced’ as it were! Notice too, though, that the dog is STILL the doer of the action, but she is no longer the grammatical subject (rather, she’s what we might call the ‘real world subject’). Also, notice that it now takes seven, as opposed to five, words to express the same idea. Finally, notice that we can omit the doer of the action by using the passive voice: ‘The cat was bitten.’ Oh yes? By whom (or ‘who’ if you prefer!)?

Here’s the point: the problem (as pointed out in Locker/Findlay) is not the passive voice itself (it has very legitimate uses, as L/F note), but rather the wordiness, and potential ambiguity and awkwardness that can result from its over- or unnecessary use. Let’s look at an example of this:

One very important quality developed by an individual during a first job is self- reliance. This strength was gained by me when I was allowed by my supervisor to set up and conduct my own survey project. (Weak; 37 words)

During their first job, many (individuals) develop (the very important quality of) self-reliance. I acquired this strength when my supervisor allowed me to set up and conduct my own survey project. (Better/Stronger?)

During a first job, many develop self-reliance, as I did when my supervisor let me set up and conduct my own survey project. (Best?)

Question: What do you think? Do the successive versions improve the original by making it more active/direct while preserving the meaning?

Prefer ‘Active’ to ‘weak’ verbs; don’t overuse the verb ‘be’

In general, try to write your sentences so as to have actions expressed in verbs, rather than in other kinds of words, for example nouns derived from verbs. One consequence of this principle is that you should try to minimize reliance on the verb ‘be’ (and some others). Why? The verb ‘be’ is a static (stative) or ‘state’ verb – it simply asserts that something (a thing, an action) exists. Consequently, more words are needed to give definition to the thing/action, often unnecessarily complicating a sentence. That’s all well and good, you might think, but what is it we’re looking for? Try this: if you see a form of ‘be’ in a sentence, look at the words/phrases immediately following it; these will often be or include nouns derived from an action verb. Here’s an example:

The council members were of the opinion that the revisions in the code were not changes they could accept.

‘Were of the opinion’: a form of the verb ‘be’ is followed by the phrase ‘of the opinion’. Well, ‘opinion’ is a noun which, here, is roughly equivalent to ‘the council members said/believed/thought’ – in other words, we could replace ‘were of the opinion’ with one word, an ‘action verb’, which expresses the same meaning more vividly and directly. As well, let’s look further: why ‘revisions’ and ‘changes’?? Aren’t revisions changes, by definition? This is a redundancy, caused almost certainly by the second use of ‘be’ in the later part of the sentence. If we eliminate that as well, we get something like:

The council members said that they could not accept the revisions in the code.

So, let’s formulate a provisional principle of clarity at sentence-level:

Where possible, have Characters function as Grammatical Subjects performing Actions expressed as VERBS, and avoid overuse of the passive voice unless we have a good reason to use it.

Here’s another example:

The cause of our schools’ failure at teaching basic skills IS not understanding the influence of cultural background on learning.

Apply our general principle to this, and we get something like:

Our schools have failed to teach basic skills because they do not understand how cultural background influences the way children learn.

Question: Can you see how this has been done, and describe this revision? Do you prefer the revision or the original, and why? Do you notice a way in which the revision more clearly expresses the logic (relationship between ideas) of the sentence?

Extending this a little, the points we’ve just been looking at play also into another important sentence-level quality: concision. Where possible, wherever doing so won’t detract from your intended meaning, use as few words as possible! Let’s work two more examples for now.

Start with this:

In my personal opinion, it is necessary that we should not ignore the opportunity to think over each and every suggestion offered.

Apply Five Principles:

§ Delete words that mean little or nothing. (empty words) § Delete words that repeat the meaning of other words. (redundancy) § Delete words implied by other words. (i.e. what readers can easily infer)

§ Replace a phrase with a word; a clause with a phrase. § Change negatives to affirmatives.

And you should end up with something like this:

We should consider each suggestion.

Question: Has the revision ‘lost’ anything significant in relation to the original?

Let’s try another one:

As you carefully read what you have written to improve wording and catch errors of spelling and punctuation, the thing to do before anything else is to see whether you could use sequences of subjects and verbs instead of the same ideas expressed in nouns.

Well, ‘carefully read what you have written to improve wording and catch errors of spelling and punctuation’ = ‘edit’! So, “As you edit”

‘the thing to do before anything else” = ‘first’!

‘use X instead of Y’ = ‘replace’

‘the same ideas expressed in nouns’ = ‘nominalizations’ (technical term! A ‘nominalization’ is an ‘action’ expressed as [and often derived from] a noun, e.g. ‘Mary was engaged in the action of walking’ rather than ‘Mary was walking’)

‘sequences of subjects and verbs’ = ‘clauses’

So, we end up with a revised version:

As you edit, first replace nominalizations with clauses.

We’ll end this Unit’s lecture discussion there. You will find two more files (Topics in Grammar I and II) following this one that discuss, with examples, further issues in sentence grammar and structure. You should work through these, together with the material in Locker/Findlay Chapter 3 and Appendix ‘A’ (you will find additional material in the Canadian Writer’s Handbook). Your instructor for your section of this course will be making specific comments on all these matters on your individual assignments, and you will be writing a test (during the Week of Unit 7) in which you will be asked to apply what you have learned to specific examples.