Classics

14. Poorly constructed and ambiguous sentences

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In essays, it is very tempting to put too much into one sentence. Phrasing becomes muddled when a sentence is too long. Muddled phrasing gets in the way of your argument instead of reinforcing it.

A good essay sentence can often contain only one thought:

Often, however, you want to say a little more, and this is done through inserting what are known as subordinate (or dependent) clauses. Subordinate clauses are those parts of the sentence, often enclosed in commas, that add additional information to things mentioned in the sentence. For example:

When more than one subordinate clause is introduced, the sentence becomes hard to follow. Try this:

If you need to keep all the thoughts, divide them up into comprehensible chunks. Any thoughts you find unnecessary, discard.

Ambiguity

Sometimes we write sentences that are very easily misunderstood.

Whose hero, Homer's or Virgil's?

Who is outnumbered? The Athenians or the Persians?

Ambiguity occurs when you have two items or people - Homer, Virgil, the Athenians and the Persians in my examples - followed by a pronoun (pronouns are him, her, they, I, it - words standing in place of the person or item's name) that could be standing in for either item/person.

Tip:
TaskTask TypeDifficulty
Task 1Free textModerate
Task 2Free textMore Challenging
Task 3Free textModerate
Task 4Free textMore Challenging
Task 5Free textModerate
Task 6Free textMore Challenging
Task 7Free textMore Challenging
Task 8Free textModerate