Clarity, Part 2

Now that the revising process is in its final stages, it is time to take another look at the draft through a few different "Clarity" lenses.



Morales, Javier "Clarity" 03/03/2012 via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Active verbs- The active voice is used when the subject of a sentence performs an action. The passive voice is used when something is performed on the subject. Using the active voice makes writing more clear and straightforward.

Parallel ideas- When two ideas are parallel, the way they are presented in a sentence should also be identical.



Needed words- Ellipsis must be used only when excluding the word does not affect sentence clarity. Words may need to be added to complete compound structures, or complete comparisons.

Mixed constructions- To present ideas more clearly, a writer must avoid linking two ideas with incorrect grammatical structure, or linking two unrelated ideas.

Example Revision 1
"The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is among many projects to be under scrutiny, but what sets it apart is its size." In his peer review, Nick stated that this sentence seemed strange because the size of the fighter should not set it apart. This comment made me realize that my use of a pronoun instead of the F-35 program made it seem like size referred to the fighter, rather than the program as a whole. I added the needed words to fix the problem.

Example Revision 2
"The premise behind building one aircraft for three separate military branches is that the aerial needs of the branches have enough commonalities that one basic design can be altered slightly to accommodate each branch." It was also pointed out that this sentence is too wordy. The mixed construction of the sentence stems from the unclear link between the aerial needs of the branches and the concept that one basic design can be modifies to accommodate each of them. To fix this, the sentence structure and word choice were streamlined.