Clarity, Part 2

This blog post will be a continuation on the topics in the "clarity" section of the Rules for Writers book. It's important to look at a lot of helpful tips and rules to continue to better your writing. Below are four topics I chose.

normalityrelief, "Clarity" March 5, 2011 via Flickr
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Balance Parallel Ideas 

Consecutive ideas should appear in a parallel grammatical form. If the train of thought suddenly changes, it makes the sentence awkward. Parallel ideas should have parallel sentence structures to make their connection more clear. Conjunctions such as "and" or "but" can work well with pairs of ideas, as well as words such as  "than" or "as".  If the ideas don't match up in a grammatical way, it may leave the reader feeling confused.

Make the Point of View Consistent

It can be easy to shift away from a third person perspective into a first person one, especially in a paper that requires your own ideas and input. While "I" may emphasize the opinion of the writer, it doesn't sit well with a paper that has been written in a third person point of view. Third person point of view is much more professional an academic. Keep the tone, verbs tenses, and mood consistent throughout.

Provide some Variety

After doing the previous blog post, it can be easy to see why variety is important. Using varying sentence structures and openings keeps your paper from sounding too repetitive and, therefore, boring. It should also be used with caution. Don't sacrifice clarity for variety. Try to invert some sentences ("the cheese fridge is opposite the produce section" could change to "opposite the produce section is a fridge full of cheese") if you can get it to sound natural, and don't be afraid to play with your sentences.

Emphasize Key Ideas

Putting importance on the point of a sentence can be very beneficial to a paper like a QRG. Keep ideas that are equal coordinated when combining sentences, and use subordination on ideas that aren't key. Short sentences are short and demand attention. If an idea isn't important enough for this sort of emphasis, get rid of choppy sentences by combining them with sentences that are equally unimportant. Keep major ideas in the foreground and complement them with less important ideas.


Draft Examples 

While reading back through my own draft, I noticed some issues with unclear sentences. Many need some more variety, some need to be combined, a few pronouns need to be changed, and there could be some more emphasis on key ideas. For example, this sentence:

"Vatican correspondent for The Wall Street journal, Francis X. Rocca states..."

I put the modifier before the subject, which takes away from his importance and they key idea of the sentence. I should place Rocca's name first and then his title, as that will improve the flow of the sentence and better emphasize the key idea. Another example is actually two sentences:

" Visitors will wander into boarded off areas, either for curiosity’s sake or because broken barriers simply don’t scream “off limits” to them. Not only are tourists often unaware, the enforcement is scarce. "

The second sentence feels awkward and choppy next to the first one. I believe I should combine these two sentences but possibly keep the ideas in them parallel, seeing as they are both important. I could even make the second sentence subordinate, as I've mentioned that concept before in a previous paragraph.