He shadowed Laux longer than O'Rourke.
Standing on each side of the door, a fat and tall man looked suspiciously at them.
Ellipsis is often desirable for the sake of brevity, but one must be sure never to omit a word or phrase unless precisely that word or phrase may be readily supplied from the context.
157. Clearness in the Sentence.—After correct grammar, the next points to seek in writing the sentence are clearness and force, which together give a sentence its interest. Of the two, clearness is the more important. A reporter should never write a sentence that must be read twice to be understood. As has been said once or twice already, but may be repeated for emphasis, news stories to-day are read rapidly, and rapid reading is possible only when sentences yield their ideas with small effort on the part of the reader. Consider the following:
The Assembly on Thursday refused to pass the Grell Bill, permitting the sale of intoxicating liquors, after the close of the polls on election days, over the governor's veto.
This sentence is clear if one will stop to read it twice; but there is the trouble: one must read it twice—a task few will perform.
158. Grammatically Connected Phrases.—The lack of entire clearness in the sentence just quoted is due to a difficulty over which the best writers often stumble,—failure to keep grammatically connected words, phrases, and clauses as close together as possible. In the sentence quoted, for instance, if the phrase over the governor's veto were placed immediately after pass, the whole sentence would be clear at once to the reader. The same fault exists in the following:
The witness said she had a furnished bedroom for a gentleman 22 feet long by 11 feet wide.
159. Correlative Conjunctions.—The correlative conjunctions, either ... or, neither ... nor, whether ... or, and not only ... but also, are also particularly liable to trip a writer. Each should come immediately before the word or phrase it modifies. For example:
Either the prisoner will be hanged or sentenced to life imprisonment.