- Excessive predication: Excavating is the first operation in street paving. The excavating is usually done by means of a steam shovel. The shovel scoops up the dirt and loads it directly into wagons.
- Right: Excavating, the first operation in street paving, is usually done by a steam shovel which loads the dirt directly into wagons.
- Monotonous: The doe is wading along the shore. She is nibbling the lily pads as she goes. Now she moves slowly around the point. She has a little spotted fawn with her. The fawn frolics along at the heels of his mother.
- Better: Wading along the shore, the doe nibbles the lily pads by the way, and moves slowly around the point. A spotted fawn frolics at her heels.
- Primer style: Rooms are marked on the floor. These rooms are about fourteen feet square.
- Better: The floor is marked off into rooms about fourteen feet square.
[Note.]—An occasional short sentence is permissible, even desirable. Successive short sentences may be used to express rapid action, or emphatic assertion, or deliberate simplicity. Otherwise, avoid them.
Exercise:
- Decatur has wide streets. The streets are paved with brick, asphalt, and creosote blocks.
- Sixteen posts are set in a row. All of these are at equal intervals.
- The boat approaches the leeward side of the ship. This side is the side protected from the wind.
- The Scientific American reports the progress of science. It explains new inventions. It makes practical applications of scientific principles.
- The beans are usually harvested about the middle of September. They are cut when the plants turn color at the roots and the beans turn white. They are cut by a bean-cutter which takes two rows at a time.
[Excessive Coördination]
In structure a sentence may be
- Simple: The rain fell.
- Compound: The rain continued and the stream rose.
- Complex: When the rain ceased, the flood came.
In B, the clauses are of almost equal importance, and the first is coördinated with the second. In C, the clauses are not of equal importance, and the first is subordinated to the second. And is a coördinating conjunction. When is a subordinating conjunction. For a list of connectives see [36].
14. Do not use coördination when subordination will secure a more clear and emphatic unit of thought. Especially do not coördinate a main idea with an explanatory detail. The speech of children connects all ideas, important and unimportant, with and. Discriminating writers place minor ideas in subordinate clauses, consign still less important ideas to participial or prepositional phrases, and omit trivial details altogether.
- Childish: I went down town and saw a crowd standing in the street, and wanted to know what was the matter, and so I went up and asked a man.
- Right: When I went down town, I saw a crowd standing in the street, and since I wanted to know what was the matter, I asked a man. [Two clauses are subordinated by the use of when and since. This change abolishes two ands. The words went up and are struck out. One and remains, and deserves to remain, for it joins two ideas which are truly coördinate.]
- Main idea not emphasized: I talked with an old man and his name was Ned.
- Better: I talked with an old man named Ned. [A participial phrase replaces a clause. The name is now subordinated.]
- Main idea not emphasized: Developing is the next step in preparing the film, and it is very important.
- Better: Developing, the next step in preparing the film, is very important. [An appositional phrase replaces the first predicate.]
- Main idea not emphasized: They began their perilous journey, and they had four horses.
- Right [emphasizing perilous journey]: With four horses they began their perilous journey. [A prepositional phrase replaces a clause.]
- Right [emphasizing having the horses]: When they began their perilous journey, they had four horses. [A subordinate clause replaces a main clause.]
- Capable of greater unity: The frog is a stupid animal, and may be caught with a hook baited with red flannel. [Is the writer trying to tell us how to catch frogs, or merely that frogs are stupid? Coördination makes the two ideas appear equally important.]
- Right [emphasizing frogs are stupid]: The fact that the frog can be caught with a hook baited with red flannel proves his stupidity.
- Right [emphasizing how to catch frogs]: The frog, being stupid, will bite at a piece of red flannel.