Sentence Clarity Quotes

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.'

No matter what any of the grammar teachers say, punctuation is an arbitrary matter. It should be used to make sentences clear.

The first thing to ask when writing a sentence is 'What am I trying to do?'

A period may be defined as a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance

An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.

We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together.

For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what's superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially, cut, is essential. It's satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical, sharp.

It is indeed acceptable practice to sometimes split an infinitive. If infinitive-splitting makes available just the shade of meaning you desire or if avoiding the separation creates a confusing ambiguity or patent artificiality, you are entitled to happily go ahead and split!

Except in expert hands, stats can get in the way of story; an array of data that might better be presented in a table instead clogs up sentences.