Clarity, Part 1

The Rules for Writers book provides many excellent tips on how to write a successful paper. Below I have chosen four topics out of the clarity section of the book and have discussed what they taught me.

Parallel ideas

One of the reasons why I chose to study this topic was because it seemed to be a relatively new concept to me. After reading through the chapter I realized most of it was common sense, making sure verbs were kept in the same tense or adjectives matched, but still provided me with a lot of information. When writing, I have a tendency to switch around tenses or forms which can cause confusion to the reader. By using parallels effectively (i.e. to be tossed and to be caught) establishes emphasis, and can be useful when trying to portray certain actions or emotions.

Misplaced and/or dangling modifiers

This section of the book taught me what modifiers were and the proper way to use them. A common mistake when using limiting modifiers such as only or almost is to put them in the wrong spot, distorting clarity. I know that I am guilty of occasionally screwing up the placement of modifiers, and now that I understand more about how they function hopefully this will be avoidable.

Emphasis

Before reading this topic, I was not aware of subordinate and coordinate phrases. I now know that if two ideas are of equal or near equal importance they are considered coordinate and should be joined using a semi-colon. Subordinate phrases join one important idea with one less important idea, the more important one going first. Although this technique is helpful, it must be used cautiously, as overuse of either will draw away from the purpose of the text.

Exact words

The biggest lesson behind this topic was to become best friends with a dictionary and a thesaurus. Having access to a larger vocabulary can add vivacity to your text and avoid making it a snooze-fest. It is also important to use standard idioms to ensure that the meaning isn't lost in translation and to avoid relying heavily on cliches. Being consciously aware of the images being invoked by figures of speech used will help establish clarity- if the image invoked isn't what you are trying to portray, then consider changing the figure of speech.

fauxto-digit. "Bob and Weave". October 4, 2008 via flickr.
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Reflection:

While reading through Swati's and Elliot's QRG drafts, I noticed that one of the biggest issues was the use of parallelism. In some of the sentences, the parallels were fine, but in others verb tenses were being switched around, or missing the modifiers that would match them. I noticed that all four of the topics I studied were used at least once throughout both of their drafts.

This sentence, from Swati's QRG, shows a common mistake made when trying to use exact words:

"In order to spread awareness about the bioethical issues involved in this type of genetic experimentation, bioethics.com (2015), an organization established to raise consciousness about bioethics, used their Twitter account . . ."

While the word consciousness does have the connotation of awareness of one's surroundings, in this particular instance it sticks out as not belonging. Simply using awareness instead of consciousness would make the sentence more effective.

This sentence, from Elliot's QRG, shows the proper use of parallelism:

"The answer to this question is a yes and a no."

A section of the Rules for Writers book focuses solely on the use of parallelism. By matching tenses and forms with one another, the overall meaning is emphasized more and makes it more effective.