Sentence Clarity

Lesson for Sentence Clarity

Three very important ways to refine your prose:

• Active Voice
• Parallelism
• Redundancy

Create parallel constructions for the following sentences (parallel means that each item or phrase is in a similar grammatical structure):

1. The new employee is enthusiastic, skilled, and you can depend on her.

2. Our trip was boring, expensive, and one I’ll never repeat.

3. She plans to study all this month and on scoring well in her licensing examination.

Create non-redundant constructions for the following sentences:

1. I think I should forewarn you ahead of time before you visit my parents.
    

2. Asking what your country can do for you isn’t appropriate. Asking what you can do for your country is, however, appropriate.

Sexist Language

Revising sexist language. As a general rule, don’t refer to a person, job, or activity as gendered. In other words, don’t forget that men and women may occupy the same jobs. What to do?

1. Make things plural.

2. Switch between he and she.

3. Use person instead of man or woman.

Unless you’re addressing high school children or younger people, use man/men or woman/women.

However, take a look at the age range for pediatric medicine at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) under "General Pediatrics." Age range is birth to 21 years.