Clarity, Part 1

In Rules for Writers, there is a section that gives advise on how to make your writing more clear. In this post, I will address 4 of the points advised about.

Balanced parallel ideas:

When flipping through the chapter, I stopped here because I love writing in parallels. It never occured tome to make sure they were balanced rather than just writing what comes to mind and feels natural. Sometimes what feel natural in your mind, doesn't sound natural written down. So to balance them, parallel single words with other single words, phrases with phrases, and clauses with clauses. I will definitely keep this in mind as I write.

Invert sentences occasionally:

The key word, for me, here is occasionally. I find that I use inverted sentences too often. Like the book says, many inversions sound artificial and should be avoided except in the most formal context. As I continue to write, I will now have an eye for these inversions and will try to avoid using them too often.

Avoid unnecessary repetition of words:

In my writing, I need to work on wordy sentences. I think one thing specific would be to avoid repetition of words. Sometimes, I find myself repeating things that can easily be replaced by a different phrase or just a different word. One word that I often have to go back an eliminate is 'that.' I use 'that' much more than I need to.

Reduce clauses to phrases, phrases to single words:

Like I mentioned, my writing tends to be too wordy. I think that I often feel like the more words, better sounding words, and more better sounding words make me sound smart. But then when I look back, I'm just repeating myself, or writing in circles. This is something that I am always on the lookout for. to revise.


Reflection:

I really enjoy reading other's QRGs to see what people are talking about as well as helping them out. I read through Evan's QRG and he had a couple of clarity issues, but they were things that I have also had problems with. For example, a sentence from Even's draft read,

"Many news outlets have taken time to discuss the controversy, but. Many outlets have not shared a bias to the company one way or the other"

This is an example the repetition of words. He used many outlets to start both of his sentences when he could have just combined them.

In Isaak's draft, he typically wrote with great clarity. An example from his draft is,

"Over the last couple decades, the concern of head trauma to players within the National Football League has been evident.  Although the care is present, not much has changed in the league. The NFL has been scrutinized for being a reactive organization that doesn’t ever see what’s coming."

This is an example of great sentence variety. There is inversion as well as other ways to format the sentences.