Enhance Your Writing Ability One Sentence At a Time

With each post, we’ll take a poor sentence and show you how it can be fixed … in detail.  If you study these fixes, we guarantee you’ll become a better writer.   It’s the way most good writers learn to write.

Most good writers will readily admit that their first drafts are terrible.   It’s at this point they go to work to polish their prose, sentence by sentence.  Writing a sentence that expresses the intended idea is a skill that takes time, practice, and perseverance.  At some point in their development, almost all good writers have had the benefit of one-on-one instruction from good teachers who critiqued their work in detail.  In effect, the student learns by having his or her errors corrected.  This is what we do here.  We show how poor sentences can be improved and, in our experience, it’s an excellent way for subscribers to enhance their writing ability.    

Here is an example of how we do it.  This university student was explaining why she preferred reading periodicals and newspapers to books with this sentence:

I like reading articles because they are short, to the point, and I get a lot of information.

There is a problem with her list.  Her list items are “short,” “to the point,” and “I get a lot of information.”  Each of these has to fit with the part of the sentence that introduces the list, “I like reading articles because they are ...”.  The way to test whether each list item makes sense is to try it with the list introduction part.  The first one would be 

“I like reading articles because they are short,” 

the second is 

“I like reading articles because they are to the point,” 

and the third is 

“I like reading articles because they are I get a lot of information.”  

As you can see, this third list item doesn’t work.  But there is an easy fix.  The student could change her last list item to “informative.”  With this change, the sentence becomes:

I like reading articles because they are short, to the point, and informative.

There is still a problem with this sentence because two of her descriptors are repetitive.   Isn’t it true that a short article is also to the point?  We also think the word “periodical” should be mentioned somewhere.  So, another way to rewrite is:

I like reading periodicals because the articles are short and informative. 

What should become clear as you work through our examples is that writing a good sentence is an exercise in logic.  Thinking through a sentence rewrite to express the intended idea requires careful thought and consideration.  This is why we’ve called the site Sentence Logic.

Our plan is to post two sentences a week, on Mondays and Fridays, between 8:00 and 8:30 am EST.  Paying subscribers will get both posts, full access to our archive, and other material.   Basic subscribers (free) will receive one post a week.  To get these free posts, submit your email address and then choose the button “None” when choosing your subscription plan. 

For teachers: Feel free to download our material and share it with your students.  Even better, if you want to contribute a sentence and a fix, we’d be happy to publish it.  If you see an issue with one of our posts, feel free to comment.  

For parents: You might consider going over each post with your child.  As you do this work, bear in mind that your child will be learning a crucial thinking skill, and, in so doing, is likely to be getting an edge on his or her classmates.   

For all subscribers: we’d love to hear your feedback so contact us at any time.