Clarity Through Simplicity
Inexperienced writers often make sentences overly complex and wordy. Most often this is because they combine needless "to be" verbs and prepositional phrases.
Experienced writers eliminate unnecessary to be verbs and prepositions, simplify the grammar accordingly and make the sentence center on a simple, active verb.
The clearest English sentences have this simple structure:
Subject --- Verb. Something did something.
Or: Subject --- Verb --- Object.
As a general rule, the closer a sentence sticks to that structure, the easier it is to understand.
To drastically improve your writing, regardless of the genre or purpose. Follow these guidelines when revising:
STEP ONE: Eliminate All Needless "to be" Verbs
1) Identify and circle all "to be" verbs, including is, was, am, were, will be, seems to be, have been etc.
2) Attempt to cross out and eliminate these "to be" words and phrases from the sentence and replace them with a simple, clearer, non-compound action-verb. To figure out what that action verb should be:
a) Ask yourself "What is the central action in this sentence?" or "Who's kicking who?" What is being done and who's doing it to who?" (actually "to whom" is the snotty way). Who did what to whom? or What did what to what?
EX: Needlessly complex: This sentence is in need of an active verb.
b) See if that action is implied in another, non action word like a noun or adjective. If so, turn that noun or adjective into a verb.
EX: Simplified: This sentence needs an active verb.
c) If no existing noun or adjective exists, add the verb from scratch; make the implicit action in the sentence explicit.
(note, not all "to be" verbs can be eliminated)
STEP TWO: Eliminate All Needless Prepositions
Prepositions are words or phrases that show relationships between two or more things, like: to, from, of, under, on, next to, above etc. As they say in 6th grade: a preposition is anything an airplane can do to a cloud.
1) Identify and circle the prepositions.
2) The next step
is to get rid of as many
of them as you can. Or, for example,
apply these rules: "Next, omit them"
Prepositions not eliminated by creating active verbs can often be eliminated by using possessive nouns, such as
EX: Needlessly complex: "The car of my father"
EX: Simplified: "My father's car."
EX: Needlessly complex: "The job that I had this summer"
EX: Simplified: "My summer job."
EXAMPLES:
Here is an example of the rule of justice in argumentation.
One of the most important results of the presentation of the data is the alteration of the status of the elements of discourse.
"One of the lessons that I learned from my job at the Forest Service during the last summer was that I needed to learn how to make priorities and act upon them."
BONUS: Eliminate "Blah blah blah is that..."
You can also clarify by simply eliminating so-called "Blah blah blah is that..." phrases; simply cross out "is that" and start the sentence with whatever followed it:
What I would like to say is that you stink.
My opinion is that on this point we have only two options....
The fact of the matter is that the material of this course is drawn from the findings of Dr. Boogermeister....