- Wrong: The Spartans did not care for literature, and lived in the southern part of Greece.
- Wrong: The coffee business is not difficult to learn, and the most important work in preparing coffee for the market is the roasting of the green berries.
The simplest method of correction is to divide the sentence.
- Right: The Spartans lived in the southern part of Greece. They did not care for literature.
- Right: The coffee business is not difficult to learn. The most important work in preparing the coffee for the market is the roasting of the green berries.
Another method of correction is to subordinate one idea to the other, or to change the wording until the relation between the ideas is obvious.
- Right: The Spartans, who lived in the southern part of Greece, did not care for literature.
- Right: The coffee business is not difficult to learn, since the only important work in preparing the coffee for the market is the roasting of the green berries.
Exercise:
- Franklin is often regarded as the typical American, and wrote an interesting autobiography.
- Coal miners wear little oil lamps in their caps, and they seldom receive very good wages.
- My neighbor, Mr. Houghton, was always a very good friend of mine, and died last night.
- I dropped the clock and injured the works, but the jeweler told me it would be cheaper for me to buy a new clock.
- The next thing the camper should do is to make a bed, and the branches of the spruce are the best.
[Excessive Detail]
11. Do not encumber the main idea of a sentence with superfluous details. Place some of the details in another sentence, or omit them.
- Faulty: In the town in which I live there are several large churches, and about six o'clock one morning, in a violent storm, one of these churches was struck by lightning.
- Right: In my home town there are several large churches. One morning about six o'clock, in a violent storm, one of these churches was struck by lightning.
- Wrong: In 1836, in Baltimore, Poe married Virginia Clemm, his cousin, who was hardly more than a child, being then fourteen years old, while Poe himself was twenty-eight, and to her he wrote much of his best verse.
- Right: In 1836 Poe married Virginia Clemm. Poe was then twenty-eight, and Virginia was only fourteen. To this girl Poe wrote much of his best verse.