Chapter 9: Clear and Emphatic Sentences; Unclear Sentences; Revising for Clear Varity And Emphasis
Chapter 9: Clear and Emphatic Sentences; Unclear Sentences;
Revising for Clear Varity And Emphasis
Ø
Clear sentences
The word clear means that
anything that is easy to understand and don’t cause any confusion at all.
Anything which is visible and prominent is easy to understand. Clarity plays a
very important role in proper understanding of a particular message. So, we can
say that clear and concise messages are more likely to bring about the desired
response. Sentence is a group of words which makes the complete sense. It has
three parts
Ø Subject
Ø Verb
Ø Object
For example.
Ali eats an apple.
The sun shines brightly.
In first example ‘Ali’ is a
subject, eat is a verb and an apple is object.
In second example ‘Sun’ is a
subject, shine is a verb and brightly is adverb.
Clear sentences are those
sentences which are easy to understand and interpret. And they don’t create any
confusion at all. For clarity it is important to keep a check on sentence
length. If your sentences are too short, your writing will sound childish. And
similarly if they are too long the reader will lose track.
Writing clearly and concisely means choosing
your words deliberately, constructing you sentences carefully and using grammar
properly. By writing clearly and concisely you will get straight to your point
in a way your audience can easily comprehend.
In order to succeed in your
communication task, you need to keep your audience’s attention. Writing clearly
and concisely is one way to capture the motivation of audience.
Several techniques can help you
learn to write clearly and concisely in order to motivate your audience to read
and respond favorably to your communication.
Some examples are:
Ø Unclear:
peter’s hair needs cutting badly.
Ø Clear:
peter’s hair badly needs cutting.
Ø Unclear:
he telephoned asking me to come next Sunday today.
Ø Clear:
he telephoned today asking me to come next Sunday.
Ø Unclear:
the basket was carried by a girl full of flowers.
Ø Clear:
the basket full of flowers was carried by a girl.
Ø Choose
your words deliberately
The words you choose can either
enhance or interfere with your meaning and your audience’s comprehension.
Follow these guidelines to develop a strategy for choosing the most effective
words for your communication task.
Ø Use
simple words
Using
simple words can make your sentences clear and concise.
Use
because instead of:
Due to
fact that
In light
of the fact that
Owing to
the fact that
Use
about instead of:
Concerning
the matter of
In
reference to
With
regard to
Use
can instead of:
Is able
to
Is in a
position to
Has the
capacity to
Ø Eliminate
unnecessary words:
Unnecessary
words come in many forms. Like vague words, they can conceal instead of reveal
your meaning. Avoid excessive detail and extra determiners and modifiers in
your sentences. You should also avoid using repetitive and redundant words.
Ø Vague: apple is
developing a new consumer device that allows users to
communicate vocally in real time.
Ø Clear: apple is developing a new cell
phone.
Ø Emphatic Sentences:-
Emphatic
mean:-
Emphatic
means “forceful”, “clear” and “strong”.
Definition:-
The definition of emphatic is something that is said or done with
strong emotion re action.
Emphatic sentence is a sentence in which the verb gives
special stress on its action.
Emphatic sentence is one that is said with emphasis and stress
to indicate importance.
This expression used to show you have strong feelings about
what you are saying.
For
example;
if a cricket team defeat a match from 100 runs the victory is
emphatic because like strong speech and emphasis the victory is clear and
strong.
Creating
Emphatic Sentences:-
It can be
done by adding do, does or did to the main verb of the sentences.
Example:
Simple sentence: We speak the truth.
Emphatic sentence: We do speak the truth.
Simple sentence: I exercise daily.
Emphatic sentence: I do exercise daily.
Simple sentence: We worked hard for our exams.
Emphatic sentence: We did work hard for our exams.
Simple sentence: He
helps the poor.
Emphatic sentence: He does help the poor.
Use of
Do, Did, Does in Emphatic Sentence:-
1) Do
and Does is used if the action is in the present.
e.g.: He does go to school.
She
does look happy.
2) Did
is used if action is in the past.
e.g.: She spoke the truth.
She
did speak the truth.
Emphatic
Tense:-
The emphatic tenses of a verb are
used to add emphasis
Present
emphatic:
Present
emphatic is formed by adding the first principle part (present tense) of the
main verb to the helping verb “do” or “does”.
e.g.: They do leave early.
Ali does swim
daily.
Past
emphatic:
Past emphatic
tense is formed by adding the basic present form of the verb to the past tense
of the verb (did).
e.g.: They did leave early.
Ali did swim
daily.
Ø Unclear
sentences
Unclear means poorly stated or
poorly described or confused. So, unclear sentences are those sentences which
are not clear to the mind and they are not easily understandable. The biggest
issue of unclear sentences is using incorrect grammar when writing.
For example,
Incorrect
grammar I don’t
want nothing from you.
Correct
sentence: I don’t
want anything from you.
Revising for a clear
sentence:
·
Drafting
·
Revising
·
Editing
Drafting
Definition:
A stage of the
writing process during which a writer organize information and ideas into
sentence and paragraph.
Introduction:
Drafting is vital
part of successful writing.Once you have planned out your ideas the next step
is to start drafting or writing.Organize your information logically and
developing your topic with enough detail for your audience and purpose. You
should never send off a draft to your audience without at least some sort of
revision or editing. The more complicated your writing require more time for
drafting. As you write keep referring back to your note and the plane that you
determined in pre-writing.
In pre-writing
there are three stages:
Brainstorming:
The first step is
brainstorming in pre-writing .This means putting down all your ideas on the
paper associated with the topic that you want to write. There are many ways to
do this. Here examples of three most popular ways of generating ideas.
a.
Listing
b.
Tree Diagram
c.
Idea Map.
Free-writing:
Free-writing can
also be pretty fun if you let it. Once you have the main topic of your argument
them it is time to begins getting your ideas on paper. For free-writing before
paper writing you should need to write for several (8-10) minute about on your
topic.
Out-line:
The out-line serve
as a way to organize your thought into comprehensive process that flow smoothly
from one point to another point.
During drafting
stage, you should concentrate on getting your ideas on paper. Organize your
information logically and developing your topic with enough detail for your
audience and purpose.You should never send off a draft to your audience without
at least some sort of revision or least editing. The more complicated your
writing task is require more time you should allow yourself for drafting.
Nobody
gets it right the first time!
If a professional
writer says that he/she never write more than one draft you can pretty much but
they are joking or not telling truth.
Types
of Draft:
There are three
types of draft:
Rough
Draft:
It is very
important step in the writing process. Writing more than one draft give you
opportunity to catch problem and see where the paper may not be working. So, it
is very good ideas to leave yourself with enough time to write at least two or
three draft of your paper. While you write your rough draft you may not feel
completely satisfied about the paper but that’s ok, because it is rough draft.
Intermediate
Draft:
The process
between drafts is kind of overlapping with two of the other section, they are “Revising
and Editing”. Actually, the intermediate-draft is a process of revising your
former draft again and again.
Final-Draft:
Now we are coming
to the final draft! However, this is not end of your final paper yet!The
overall structure of writing construction has been already done.So, we could
say that you have achieved a half-success! But keep up the hard work and you
will be glade you went through so many drafts.
All the hard work just might eventually pay off in a big way.
Revising
:
Revisionliterally
means “re-seeing”—looking anew at ideas and details, their relationships and
arrangement, the degree to which they work or don’t work for the
thesis/paragraph.
In
revising, you look out to your readers, trying to anticipate how they will see
your Work and adopt a critical perspective toward your work. It involves
analyzing the global level and paragraph level organization of the document,
and making changes to your draft on a global, paragraph, and sentence level to
ensure that:
·
The document addresses its
purpose.
·
The document supports any claims
its makes
·
The structure of the document is
logical and supports the purpose and main claim
i.
If your group has drafted parts of the
document separately, merge your ideas together into a single document first,
then focus on meshing the styles. The first concern is to create a coherent
product with a logical flow of ideas. Then the stylistic differences of the
individual portions must be smoothed over.
ii. Revise
the ideas and structure of the paper before worrying about smaller,
sentence-level errors (like problems with punctuation, grammar, or word
choice). Is the argument clear? Is the evidence presented in a logical order?
Do the transitions connect the ideas effectively?
Proofreading:
Check for typos, spelling errors, punctuation problems, formatting
issues, and grammatical mistakes. Reading the paper aloud is a very helpful strategy at
this point.
Editing:
Editing involves looking at each sentence
carefully, and making sure that it’s well designed and serves its purpose.
Proofreading involves checking for grammatical and punctuation errors, spelling
mistakes, etc. Proofing is the final
stage of the writing process.
For example, you have submitted a manuscript of your
research paper to an international research journal for publication. The
reviewer will score the submitted manuscript according to the following codes:
·
Accept: Manuscript is ready for
publication as is.
·
Minor
Revision: Manuscript
is almost ready for publication; the author should be required to make some
small amendments. The amended manuscript may not be returned to the reviewers.
·
Major
Revision:
Manuscript has significant scientific merits but requires some major changes or
revisions by the author, and should be returned to the reviewers for a second
review round.
·
Reject and
Resubmit:
Manuscript has some scientific merits but some critical issues to be addressed.
Most likely this will involve conducting substantial additional studies
generating experimental or computational data to further validate the developed
methods or demonstrate the values of the central idea.
·
Reject: Manuscript should be rejected and
should not be considered again by TBME for publication.
Ø Revising
for variety and emphasis
Ø
What
are variety and emphasis in writing?
When
you write sentences of various lengths and structures within a paragraph or
longer piece of writing, you create sentence
variety.
Working
in concert with sentence variety, emphasis allows
you to add weight to ideas of special importance.
Using
techniques of variety and emphasis adds style and clarity to your writing.
Usually, the best time to apply the principles of variety and emphasis is while
you are REVISING.
Ø
How
to create variety and emphasis?
1.
Different
sentence lengths
2.
Occasional
questions, commands, or exclamations
3.
Modifiers
4.
Repetition
Ø
How
do different sentence lengths create variety and emphasis?
To
emphasize one idea among many others, you can express it in a sentence
noticeably different in length from the sentences surrounding it. In the
following example, a four-word sentence between two longer sentences carries
the key message of the passage.
Today
is one of those excellent January partly cloudy in which light chooses an
unexpected landscape to trick out in gilt, and then shadow sweeps it away. You
know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the
planet’s roundness arc between your feet.
—Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek
Ø
How
do occasional questions, commands, or exclamations create variety and emphasis?
Ø
Occasional
questions, placed appropriately, tend to involve readers.
Ø
Occasional
mild commands, appropriately used, gently urge a reader to think along with
you.
Ø
An
occasional exclamatory sentence, appropriate to the context, can enliven
writing.
Ø
How
can modifiers create variety and emphasis?
MODIFIERS
can expand sentences to add richness to your writing and create a pleasing
mixture of variety and emphasis. Your choice of where to place modifiers to
expand your sentences depends on the focus you want each sentence to
communicate, either on its own or in concert with its surrounding sentences.
Ø
How
does repetition affect variety and emphasis?
You
can repeat one or more words that express a main idea when your message is
suitable. This technique creates a rhythm that focuses attention on the main
idea. Here’s an example that uses deliberate repetition along with a variety of
sentence lengths to deliver its meaning.
Coal
is black and
it warms your house and cooks your food. The night is black,
which has a moon, and a million stars, and
is beautiful. Sleep is black, which
gives you rest, so you wake up feeling good. I
am black.
I feel very good this
evening.
—Langston Hughes, “That Word Black”
Ø
How
else can I create variety and emphasis?
Ø
Changing
word order
The
mayor walked
into the room. [Mayor
is the subject, which comesbefore the
verb walked.]
Any variation from standard word order creates emphasis.
Ø
Changing
a sentence’s subject
The
subject of a sentence establishes the focus for that sentence. To create the
emphasis you want, you can vary each sentence’s subject. All the sample
sentences below express the same information, but the focus changes in each
according to the subject.
i.e: Our study showed
that 25 percent of college students’ time is
spent eating or sleeping.
i.e: College students eat
or sleep 25 percent of the time, according to our
study.
Labels: Technical and Business Writing
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