Sentence sense

The fundamental qualities of effective prose are unity, coherence, emphasis, and variety. What is true for the whole essay is also true for each sentence, as well as for each paragraph, of that essay. But it all starts at the sentence level. Unity and coherence in sentences help to make your ideas logical and clear. Emphasis makes them forceful. Variety gives them interest.

WRITE UNIFIED, LOGICAL SENTENCES
A sentence is unified when all its parts contribute to making one clear idea or impression. The parts of an ideal sentence form a perfect whole, so that a clause, a phrase, or even a word cannot be changed without disturbing the clarity of the thought or the focus of the impression. The next series of blogs will try to help you write unified, logical sentences, sentences that are not cluttered with obscurities, irrelevancies, or excessive details.

Bring into a sentence only related thoughts; for thoughts not closely related, use two or more sentences.

Make sure that the ideas in each sentence are related and that the relationship is immediately clear to the reader. Use two or more sentences to develop ideas that are too loosely linked to belong in the same sentence.

UNRELATED
Yesterday Keisha sprained her wrist, and she could not find her class notes anywhere.
RELATED
Accident-prone all day yesterday, Keisha not only sprained her wrist but also lost her class notes.
{The relationship of the two ideas is made clear by the addition of the opening phrase.}

To sharpen your sentence sense, try the following exercise. All the sentences below contain ideas that are apparently unrelated. Adding words when necessary, rewrite each of the sentences to indicate clearly a relationship between ideas. If you cannot establish a close relationship, put the ideas in separate sentences.

1. A police officer who patrols the streets at night can become a hero, and cowards can be found in any walk of life.

2. The fence and driveway need repairs, and why are property taxes so high?

3. I hate strong windstorms, and walnuts pelted my bedroom roof all night.

4. There are some great musicians playing at tonight's "Concert in the Park," but personally I prefer a quiet evening at home watching the TV show "Ugly Betty."

5. Andrew was advised to hire a tutor in English immediately, but the long hours of work at The Gap kept his grades low.

Why not try this exercise right now? Send me your sugggestions for making these sentences unified and coherent.

I'll be covering other topics that will help to sharpen your sentence sense in future blogs. Keep checking back.