Notes on Sentence Clarity and Combining

• Purdue University
• Why do we need to be concerned with sentence clarity?
• To communicate effectively to the reader
• To make writing persuasive
• To show credibility and authority as a writer
• Common clarity problems
• Misplaced modifiers
• Dangling modifiers
• passive voice
• Misplaced Modifiers
• A word or phrase that causes confusion because it is located within a sentence so far away from the word(s) to which it refers
• Consider the differebnt meanings in the folowing sentences
• The dog under the tree bit Carrie vs. the dog bit Carrie under the tree
• Sometimes misplaced modifiers are used for comic effect
• How might you correct the following sentence?
• Jennifer called her adorable kitten opening the can of tuna and filled the food bowl
• Better: Opening the can of tuna, Jennifer called her adorable kitten and filled the food bowl
• How might you correct the following sentence?
• Portia rushed to the store loaded with cash to buy the birthday gift
• Better: Portia, loaded with cash, rushed to the sotre to but the birthday gift
• Misplaced Modifiers
• Some one-word modifiers often cyase confusion: almost, just, nearly, simply, even, hardly, merely, only
• Explain the meaning of the sentence
• John nearly earned 100$
• John earne nearly $100
• Dangling
• A word or phrase that modifies another word or phase that has not been stated cleart within the sentence
• Often occur at the begin. and ends of sentences
• often indicated by and -ing verb or a to + verb phrase
• Danglin can be replaced by
• placing the subject of the modification phrase as the subject of the indeendent cluase
• placing the subject of
• Passive Voic
• indicates what is receiving the action rather than explaining who is doing the action
• two indicators
• "to be" verbs - is, are, was were
• "by ___"
• Examples
• Mistakes were made
• The cats were brushed by Laura
• Sentence combining
• Why should we know about sentence combining?
• To build clarity, avoid wordiness, aoid redundancy
• Keys to sentence combining
• Create adjectives, create properly placed modifying cluases
• eliminate unnesssacav or repetitive phrases