A Writing Tip that Pays Dividends in Reader Comprehension

In Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, Joseph P. Williams writes that readers will have an easier time understanding your writing if you pay attention to where you put new information within a sentence--

Whenever possible, express at the beginning of a sentence ideas already stated, referred to, implied, safely assumed, familiar, predictable, less important, readily accessible information.

Express at the end of a sentence the least predictable, the newest, the most important, the most significant information, the information you almost certainly want to emphasize.

Here's an example, again from Williams--

Not: The large number of wounded and dead in the Civil War exceeded all the other wars in American history. One of the reasons for the lingering animosity between North and South today is the memory of this terrible carnage.

But: Of all the wars in American history, none has exceeded the Civil War in the huge number of wounded and dead. The memory of this terrible carnage is one of the reasons for the animosity between North and South today.*

When you edit a draft, pay attention to the way new and old information is doled out from one sentence to the next. By moving clauses around, you can often add to reader comprehensive. This is especially true if the beginning of each sentence picks up or echoes the idea most recently expressed at the end of the last sentence.

A similar principle is also the subject of this month's writing column in the ABA's Law Practice Management magazine. In "Lesson Two: Stress This," George D. Gopen writes that "the single most widespread and crippling problem in professional English writing" is the failure to place the most important information in the right part of a sentence.

If you're interested in improving your writing, Gopen's article is also worth a look.

*My quotes are from the second edition of Style. It's now in its eighth edition.

Comments

[Jeremy]

In college, we learned a similar trick, but my professor called it the "A->B. B->C." test. He suggested testing for this pattern in your prose after the draft was complete. Doing so ensures that each sentence is (a) important and (b) connected to the surrounding sentences.