APPENDIX E
A Few Comments About Writing Effective Sentences (and Paragraphs)
This chapter isn’t at all about how to write correct sentences—about avoiding misplaced modifiers, dangling participles, run-on sentences, superfluous commas, or comma splices. And it’s far less than comprehensive in discussing effective sentences, so you won’t find topics like sentence variety, subordination, and emphasis. What you will find is a few reasonably brief comments about strategies you can use and problems you can avoid when writing proposals.
If you want more information (either about writing correct sentences or effective ones), consult an English handbook, which most people find as enjoyable as memorizing a telephone directory, though considerably more useful. Buy a good handbook and consider it a business expense. Consider it part of your business to know what a comma splice is and how to fix one—or how never to write one in the first place. (Please don’t tell me that you’ve never been able to understand a comma splice. If you’re reading this book, you’re a very smart person. Trust me: You can understand comma splices.)
If you study the handbook, you won’t have to use a computer grammar checker, which can find a comma splice easily enough but hasn’t the foggiest notion (despite its fog index) about context. To understand what I mean, type out a stanza or two of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” a nonsense poem by the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Your spell checker will go crazy, of course. But you will score very well on the “fog index.” The sixth-grade level will suggest that your prose is clear and understandable.
Your grammar checker can’t understand context, and context determines whether you should or could write a sentence fragment or use the passive voice. Occasionally, fragments are effective, and sometimes the passive voice is necessary. You know all that because I’ve been telling you since the Introduction. The rest of this appendix will try to reinforce the importance of situational context because, as I provide some guidelines for improving the effectiveness of your sentences, I’ll phrase most of the guidelines as questions rather than statements. The guideline “Prefer the Active Voice?” really means, “In this situation, given these readers and your attempt to achieve this purpose, should you consider using the active voice?”
Avoid Abstract Nouns in the Subject Slot?
When you were six years old, you didn’t need to know the rules of grammar to be able to speak a perfectly grammatical sentence. Similarly, you don’t need to know much about grammar to write good. (Just joking! I know it should be “write well.”) It is helpful, however, to be able to identify the sentence’s subject, predicate (i.e., the verb), and main clause. If you can, you will know how to fix the problem in the following sentences. Each of these sentences contains examples of the worst, most prevalent, and easiest-to-fix problem that affects your writing style (in certain contexts!)—abstract nouns in the subject slot:
1. A new approach to the air flow problem has made ACME a major player in the design and construction of complex commercial buildings.
2. New regulations from the state and tighter building codes from the city are taking up more and more of the engineers’ time.
3. The shortage of support staff and the absence of proper control systems are causing inefficiencies in your operation.
The italicized words are the grammatical subjects in the sentences, and each word is what I call an abstract noun. Now, it’s true that, given certain contexts, some of these words could be considered concrete rather than abstract. For example, if the paragraph or document containing sentence 2 were about regulations, then the word regulations would be concrete within that context. Or, for example, if you were writing part of a methods section, the word methods would be concrete in that context. Generally speaking, however, concrete nouns are people and places (including organizations like businesses), not things. Each subject in the preceding sentences is a thing. What’s wrong with placing “things” (i.e., abstract nouns) in the subject slot?
Abstract subjects tend to increase the distance between the subject and verb, making the text more difficult to comprehend and remember. When you read, you don’t process text letter by letter or word by word. If you did, you’d have considerable difficulty remembering the content even of short sentences. Instead, you process text in chunks like phrases and clauses. Because a clause is a group of words with a subject and a predicate, you can’t process the clause until you get to the verb. When a sentence begins with a subject and takes a long time to get to the verb, the reader has to keep a great deal of information in short-term memory until the clause is complete.
Abstract subjects tend to increase the distance between subject and verb because you have to explain the abstraction. Take the abstract noun shortage in sentence 3. Because it’s an abstraction, you have to concretize it, you have to tell the reader what kind of shortage it is, before you can explain what it does. That requires the prepositional phrase of support staff that separates noun and verb. Just one prepositional phrase isn’t bad. But an abstract subject is often responsible for more difficult-to-read sentences, like this one:
The urgent request for all employees of our company to submit their time sheets at the same time is being made so that the Accounting Department can more efficiently do its work.
In this case, the writer’s answer to the question “what kind of request?” takes three prepositional phrases and 15 words.
The previous example illustrates another problem with abstract nouns as subjects: they tend to take passive verbs (e.g., “is being made”), because abstractions can’t act. The effect is lifeless prose, because the sentence’s most important slots (subject and predicate) are filled with a noun that can’t take action and a verb that can’t express action.
Eliminating abstract nouns is fairly easy. And once you get the hang of it, you won’t write many of them even in an initial draft. Here’s what to do:
Look carefully at the subject slot to see if it contains, not a person or an organization, but a thing.
If you find an abstraction, look elsewhere in the sentence to see if the subject (the topic) you’re discussing really is explicitly or implicitly about a person or people or an organization. Sentence 1 is about ACME. Sentence 2 is about engineers. Sentence 3 is about business operations.
Place the subject you’re discussing into the subject slot of the sentence.
See if the sentence is trying to express a causal relationship (a large number of sentences with abstract nouns try to do so). If the sentence is trying to express a causal relationship, use a sentence structure that immediately announces to your reader that such a relationship will be drawn: for example, “Because of X, Y occurs” or “As a result of X, Y occurs.” By following these steps, you can easily revise the three problem sentences:
1. Because of its new approach to the air flow problem, ACME has become a major player in designing and constructing complex commercial buildings.
2. Because of new regulations from the state and tighter building codes from the city, the engineers are less efficient.
3. Because of the shortage of support staff and the absence of proper control systems, your business is less efficient.
I’ve italicized the main clauses (or parts of the main clauses) to illustrate the effects of these transformed sentences. Notice that the subjects and verbs are closer together and that the main clauses, the groups of words that really contain and emphasize your message, are clear and emphatic. The message in sentence 2 is no longer that “new regulations from the state and tighter building codes from the city are taking up more and more of the engineers’ time,” but that “the engineers are less efficient.” The original sentence focuses on regulations and codes; the revision, on engineers and their problems. The original talks about things; the revision discusses a problem that people have.
The Subject Slot in SITUATION, METHODS, and BENEFITS
The generic structure slots SITUATION, METHODS, and BENEFITS each in their own way call for concrete nouns in the subject slot. In SITUATION, the subject (the topic, the idea you’re writing about) is an organization’s problem or opportunity. Therefore, a good many of the sentences in SITUATION should take as their grammatical subjects the name of the organization or pronouns that refer to it. Consider these paragraphs from the first draft of a situation slot in the ABC proposal:
For many years now, ABC has grown by increasing its share of the modestly expanding household and appliance market, primarily by producing high-quality products at competitive costs and by being very responsive to the needs of its customers. As a result, ABC has become one of the premier divisions within Consolidated Industries. . . .
Recognizing these threats, ABC’s management group has suggested several alternatives for increasing capacity, but little agreement exists about how that capacity should be developed, and no agreement exists about the amount of capacity required. Consensus does exist, however, in two areas: Additional capacity will be needed and the time when it will be needed is fast approaching.
Here, the first three subjects (the ABC organization itself or a group within it) are all concrete. The next subject (agreement) is abstract, but the following two (agreement and consensus) are concrete because of the context established by the first use of agreement.
By using concrete subjects in SITUATION, you focus on my question: “What is your understanding of my problem?” rather than some anonymous question like “What is the problem?”
In METHODS, similarly, you usually don’t want to answer, “What will be done?”; you probably want to answer “What will you (or your firm) do?” The first question calls for an anonymous answer, with an abstract noun as subject: “In Phase I, the resources that are required will be specified.” The second question calls for a concrete noun as subject, “we” or the name of your firm: “In Phase I, we will specify the resources required to. . . .”
In BENEFITS, you should try to place either the benefactor (you) or the beneficiary (me) in the subject slot. That is, the template sentence should be either “We will give this to you” or “You will receive this from us.” In either case, the subject slot will contain a concrete noun.
Problems are only problems to people or organizations; they aren’t abstractions floating in the air affecting no one or some anonymous others. Too many proposals I’ve read describe my organization’s problems or opportunities as if they weren’t mine, as if I weren’t affected by them. The situation slots tend to address some situation, but not one that’s concretely and recognizably mine. Similarly with benefits. When proposals I’ve read include benefits, they sound like generic blandishments—and bland ones at that—not benefits that I sense can be mine or that are written with me in mind. In almost all cases, the problems described and the benefits articulated seem abstract because the proposal’s sentences don’t include me and my organization as grammatical subjects.
Change Nouns into Verbs?
The original sentence that follows contains an abstract noun in the subject slot; in the revised sentence, I’ve corrected that problem and improved the sentence further by changing nouns into verbs:
Original: The understanding of design can be helpful in the construction of attractive buildings.
Revised: By understanding design, you can construct attractive buildings.
Some words like understanding are spelled the same in their noun and verb forms, and the vast majority of words ending in -tion, -sion, and -ment have verb or -ing verb forms. Construction can be construct or constructing. Dissension can be dissent or dissenting. Development can be develop or developing. Note what happened when I changed the nouns to verbs in the preceding sentences: I could delete the article (the) before the noun as well as the preposition (of) that follows. “The understanding of” becomes “understanding”; “the construction of” becomes “construct.” My revision contains fewer words, and the sentence is less noun heavy, less formal, and more active.
Prefer the Active Voice?
In an active voice sentence, the subject does the acting: “John hit the ball.” In a passive voice sentence, the subject is acted upon, i.e., passive: “The ball was hit by John.” Note that in this instance, the passive sentence takes 50 percent more words to express the same basic idea. If conciseness is your overriding objective, you ought to prefer the active voice.
Of course, we can reduce the second sentence by two words if we eliminate “by John.” This construction is sometimes called the anonymous passive because nothing in the sentence explains who (or what) acted. If avoiding blame or attribution is your overriding objective, you ought to prefer the anonymous passive. In some situations, that is, you might prefer “A poor decision was made” to “The CEO screwed up.”
As with everything else in writing, your decisions ought to be defined by the situation, by your strategy, by your analysis of your intended readers or listeners and their relationship to you. You and those readers or listeners exist in a context. By the way, if that context happens to be a scientific one and you are writing within a scientific culture, then you will likely be using the passive voice quite often, simply because that’s the way things are done, that’s how writers are expected to write and how readers expect to read.
Combine There, It, That, Which, or Who with to Be?
When words like there and it are combined with a form of the verb to be, they often signal wordiness. As with the first two sentences below, the only revision needed is a simple deletion. The third sentence requires a little more.
A problem exists with the air-conditioning system that was recently purchased.
When the system crashes, those employees who are working on the system have to reenter their data.
There are likely to be thousands of people [will likely be] laid off at the automobile plant.
Avoid There is . . . that and It is . . . that?
When a sentence begins with there or it, takes a form of the verb to be, and contains a following that or which, you can very easily revise by eliminating all the offending words:
It is the lack of space, however, that is the problem.
There is one other disadvantage that makes renovating an unattractive option.
Use Parallelism?
Do you like swimming, fishing, and hunting? Or do you like swimming, to fish, and hunting? If you focus not on the activities but on the sentences, I hope you say that you like the first sentence rather than the second. The first places similar ideas (in this case, things you might like to do) within similar grammatical structures (in this case, -ing verbs). The second sentence places similar ideas within nonparallel structures. That’s why the sentence probably sounded strange to you; if you had written it, you would sound strange and perhaps unintelligent to your reader. So one good reason to use parallelism is that you avoid sounding stupid. Another good reason is that your writing (and speaking) will sound more coherent. Incoherent writing, like incoherent behavior, appears random and disconnected:
I like swimming. Fishing is another enjoyable activity to me. You know, to go out and hunt really enlivens your senses.
Someone who speaks like that, you might conclude, can’t quite get all his thoughts together. Nothing seems to “flow.” When you say that a paragraph doesn’t flow, you mean that it lacks coherence. Compare the preceding paragraph to this one:
I like swimming because it’s invigorating. I like fishing because it’s enjoyable. I like hunting because it enlivens my senses.
This paragraph is coherent because it contains three related ideas, and each idea is expressed in the same way: “I like X because. . . .”
In your proposals, I most often see problems with parallelism in lists. By convention, a list is a group of related ideas, and, therefore, the ideas need to be expressed similarly. Usually, a list is preceded by a string of words that end with a colon. These words are called “determiners” because they determine how the items in the list need to be phrased. If, for example, the determiner were “I like,” then your list might go like this:
swimming because it’s invigorating
fishing because it’s enjoyable
hunting because it enlivens my senses
If, on the other hand, the determiner were “I like to,” then you’d have to change all the -ing words to verbs like “swim.”
Even writers who do a good job of using parallelism within a list sometimes have trouble with lists within lists. The text below, taken from a slide in a presentation, contains not one list but three, signaled by the appropriate numerals I’ve added:
1. Costly administrative organization:
2. Three separate and fully equipped companies exist in a fairly small market
2. Considerable overlap occurs in administrative responsibilities
1. Logistics are costly:
3. Long chain of distribution from production to customer
3. The tonnage is small
3. Many small customers
3. Low rate of turnover in stock
To check for parallelism in text like the above, read each list separately to be certain that all items within each list are parallel. In that way, you can quickly and clearly determine that the two items in the first list are out of sync. The first one is a fragment; the second a complete sentence. To correct the parallelism, make both into fragments or both into sentences. Although the items in the second group are parallel to each other, the third group contains an item not parallel with the others. Again, the solution is to make all four items into complete sentences or to make all four into fragments. No problem would exist if the #2 list contained all sentences and the #3 list contained all fragments, because each group is a separate list. (By the way, although the usage varies, it’s not always necessary to include end punctuation—for example, a period—after each element in a list because the list itself can be a form of punctuation.)
So far, I’ve given you two reasons to use parallelism: You can avoid sounding stupid, and you can ensure that your writing flows, that it’s coherent. There’s a third reason: You can increase the stylishness of your sentences. Now most business documents are written in what’s called a plain style because documents need to be used efficiently. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t incorporate some flourishes, occasionally and judiciously. Effective parallelism can help avoid monotony by creating interesting rhythms, as Thomas Jefferson knew so well:
In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.
If Jefferson isn’t to your taste, at least in a business context, perhaps the following is:
Most important, we will ensure that simple things get done correctly: that all workers are doing their jobs, that routine responsibilities aren’t falling through the cracks, that simple maintenance and housekeeping are provided, that there are proper controls of raw materials and work in process, that scheduling is done effectively, and that all activities are aimed to flow as smoothly as possible during the transition.
Here we have what I call the persuasive force of style. Perhaps just as important as the content in this long sentence is the long string of clauses that suggest a flurry, a whirlwind, of activity. Whether you’re writing or speaking, how you express yourself can be just as persuasive as what you say. Good parallelism can be the “how” that lets the “what” sing.
Write Coherent Paragraphs
As I said in the last section, when you read a paragraph that flows, it has coherence. The ideas move one from the other smoothly, and you don’t get lost because you always seem to know, in the flow of ideas, where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going. As we’ve seen, parallelism is one technique you can use to achieve coherence. There are at least four others:
Pronouns
Forecasting
Transitions
Key repetitions
The paragraphs in Figure E.1 use these techniques (as well as parallelism). Read the paragraphs; then we can talk about them.
1. Top Notch Corporation’s goal is to maintain or enhance its position of
2. market leadership by being the best producer in the industry. To achieve
3. this goal, you have adopted three overall strategies:
4. • Improve customer service and quality
5. • Become the low-cost producer
6. • Increase market share through differentiated positioning
7. All three of these strategies have significant implications for Top Notch’s
8. distribution strategy.
9. ***
10. Top Notch Corporation has attempted to become more flexible by
11. developing partnerships with customers, such as the Excel-Mart
12. “electronic-links” relationship, the Superway exclusive provider program,
13. and various hospital contractual relationships. However, these partner
14. relationships still work best when the customers agree to follow the Top
15. Notch system. Unfortunately, Top Notch’s system is not flexible enough
16. to meet the diverse value-added requirements of individual customers.
17. This flexibility will be a prerequisite for future success in this changing
18. market.
FIGURE E.1 Achieving paragraph coherence through parallelism, pronouns, forecasting, transitions, and key repetitions
Pronouns contribute to coherence because they have antecedents (nouns that come before them). Therefore, a pronoun in one sentence that refers to a noun in a previous sentence helps to “glue” the two sentences together. The pronoun this (line 3) refers to goal (line 1). Similarly, these (7) looks back to strategies (3), and these (13) refers to relationships, which ends the previous sentence. Note how the writer is careful to follow every this or these that begins a sentence with the word it refers back to. In that way, the reader doesn’t have to stop reading to look back at the previous sentence to find the antecedent.
Forecasting tells readers where you’re taking them, what you’re going to be discussing. The bulleted list (lines 4–6) serves to forecast the next three paragraphs (which I haven’t included). Each of these paragraphs discusses in turn one of the three overall strategies.
Unlike forecasting, which lets readers know where they’re going, transitions provide a bridge from one juncture to another. However (line 13) and unfortunately (line 15) are good examples. They prepare readers for a change in thought that will be expressed in the sentences that the transitions begin.
Using key repetitions is one of the most effective techniques for increasing the coherence of your paragraphs. Like pronouns, key repetitions tend to glue sentences together, especially when a word or phrase at the end of one sentence is picked up at the beginning of the next one. The sentence ending on line 13, for example, concludes with the word relationships, which is repeated near the beginning of the next sentence. That sentence, in turn, ends with the phrase Top Notch system (line 15) and is followed, at the beginning of the next sentence, by Top Notch’s system. The writer also achieves coherence by using goal (line 1) and goal (line 3); strategies (line 3) and strategies (line 7); flexible (line 10), flexible (line 15), and flexibility (line 17); and partnerships (line 11) and partner (line 13). These key repetitions contribute to the paragraphs’ flow.
A fine line exists between key (or “good”) repetitions and redundancy (i.e., “bad” repetitions). Key repetitions create cohesion and focus. Redundancies are, well, repetitive. Because writing is an art rather than a science, it’s impossible to pinpoint where that fine line is. Only your ear can tell you whether you have crossed it.
I’ve tried to present some of the important techniques that you can use to write more effective sentences. Like all things related to writing, these techniques take some practice to master. But once you’ve mastered them, they don’t go away: From then on, you simply write better from first draft to last. Your sentences will be crisper, clearer, cleaner, and livelier. Most important, your more effective sentences will convince a reader that you can analyze problems, formulate methods to solve them, and articulate the benefits that will accrue from their solution. Your sentences will contain many of the characteristics of the previous sentence in this paragraph, which has a concrete noun as a subject, little distance between the subject and verb, an active verb, and coherence created by parallelism, pronouns, and key repetitions.