Clarity, Part 1

After reading the Clarity chapters of Rules for Writers, I discovered a few key parts of my writing that need work, especially in my draft of the QRG. I struggle greatly with shifts, transitions, and variety in my sentence structure and word choice, so those are the points I chose to focus on.

Trounce, "BIC Ballpoint Pen" 03/26/08 via Wikipedia Commons, Creative Commons License

Appropriate Language:

• Sometimes, less actually is more. According to Rules for Writers, one should avoid using unnecessarily wordy sentences or words that the general public may not know or understand. It also suggests avoiding slang, but that was more obvious to me, unlike the idea of not using jargon. It seems like the more complex and wordy you make a sentence, the more academic it is, but that does not mean it is always very effective.

Shifts

• The shifts chapter focuses on maintaining the same point of view, verb tense, and mood/tone as not to confuse your reader. While none of this really stood out to me or surprised me, it is something I need to work on in my writing. It helped teach me to watch out for shifts throughout my writing and edit them as needed.

Variety

• Between sentence structures, openings, and words in a sentence, a struggle with variety. I already was aware that I use summarizing words like "in general", "generally", and "overall" a lot, especially as openings, but I had not even looked out how much or well I vary the length and structure of my sentences, so that was something I learned in this chapter.

Wordy Sentences

• I usually am not very redundant in my sentences or words, as this chapter suggests looking at, but I do usually add a lot of unnecessary parts to my sentences. Ideas mentioned like cutting out extra phrases and clauses, as well as simplifying the structure to many of my sentences would benefit my writing greatly and make it seem better put together. I learned that this can also help with my struggle with variety, as I can condense some sentences and leave others, varying my sentence structure.

Reflection: After revising my own draft and the drafts of Sam and Ann, I learned how to apply some of these tips on clarity. I am not the only one that struggles with these problems, which is a real relief. I noticed, for instance, in Sam's QRG, when he said "Overall, Uber is a great business that had a fantastic idea. This has paid off greatly as the company is valued at 50 billion dollars as stated before." he needed to work on his variety, as well as wordy sentences. There was not much variety to the sentence length or structure, so the sentences seemed bland and robotic. Also, the addition of "as stated before" was not needed and made the sentences flow less effectively. On the other hand, Ann provided an example of great shifts/transitioning with her sentence "Twitter users quickly joined the argument and helped spread the controversy using the hashtag ‘#oscarssowhite.’" that starts off a new paragraph adding onto the previous one regarding Al Sharpton's thoughts. This shift seems seamless and introduces a new topic while connecting back, which is what I need to work on.