Editing services by Heather Wallace, PhD
Today’s sentence makeover comes from an author who used “because” to create long compound sentences in almost every paragraph. When did she really need the “because,” and when could she cut it?
In this sentence makeover, we start with an overcrowded sentence that is trying to do too much work on its own. We break it down into three distinct sentences, each with its own, manageable task.
In this Writing is Thinking Sentence Makeover, we make small changes to a sentence that lead to big questions about meaning. In cleaning up the sentence we confront the question, what precise claim is the author making here?
In today’s sentence makeover, Bryce turns a single 68-word sentence into four sentences. He shows us how to map the relationship between parts of a long sentence by identifying subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns.
I found this sentence on Twitter: “This rapid straightening-up caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin’s rump, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but this undulation of pure matter,
Today’s Writing is Thinking Sentence Makeover challenges the author’s word choice and scrutinizes imprecise transition words like “specifically.” This sentence was published recently in a top journal in sociology.
Children’s books and songs can get long sentences right. In my house, we’re really enjoying this gem from a book from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library: There’s a Fish near the Gnat on the Fly on the Hair on the Frog
Academic sentences often try to cram the work of multiple sentences into one complex sentence. By identifying the core of a sentence, we can decide what work each sentences should do–and what work should be delegated to another sentence.
In this Writing is Thinking sentence makeover, I highlight the verbs that get lost in a complex sentence with an em-dash clause. This sentence appears in book of philosophy from Columbia University Press. The author writes: The decision not
In this Writing is Thinking sentence makeover, I tackle a jargon-filled sentence of literary criticism, published in a Bloomsbury Academic anthology. The author writes: The comestible sensations that precede both the achieved reminiscence and its inherent condition of emotional repose