Saturday, March 7, 2009

The *new, improved* parts of a sentence.

Back in your younger years, someone undoubtedly misled you by telling you that a sentence had to have a subject and a verb. Well, that person is right, but the term "subject" is confusing - the other definitions of the word are very passive: people are subject to violence, and people take a course in a particular subject. In this last example, the word subject isn't a subject, it's an object. Confusing, huh?

Instead of thinking about a sentence having a subject and a verb, try to think of it having a "character" and an "action." The star of the sentence, the character, is the thing that's DOING the action.

Consider this sentence:

The problem with that line of thinking, and in most philosophies involving laissez-faire economics, is that it is neglectful of human dignity.



What is the subject of the sentence? And what's that subject doing? The answer is that there are a couple subjects, woven within each other - it's a needlessly complex sentence. Is the "problem" the subject? Is the "line of thinking" the subject? How about laissez-faire economics, is that the subject? And each of these subjects are *abstract concepts,* not a simple person, place or thing. Some of the nouns are actually verbs turned into nouns (called a nominalization, if you want to get technical). "Thinking" is normally a verb, but in this case it's turned into a noun.

And that line of thinking is just sitting there - it's ISing. Who's neglecting human dignity? You see, the reader is forced to do some very hard work with this sentence. First, they'll have to imagine an abstract concept (a line of thinking) and then generalize that abstraction, and then it just sits there. It doesn't neglect, it IS neglectful. Of course it's neglectful, lines of thinking haven't helped anyone since the beginning of time.

And look at the distance between the subject and verb. From the problem to the "is" is quite a distance. What are the odds the reader will have to double back and make sure he or she has understood? Quite high.

Let's revise that sentence:

"In using laissez faire economics, the government has neglected basic human dignity."

Now, the truth of this sentence may not be proven, but it makes its point much better and faster, and has more information in fewer words. Did the writer mean the government? We don't know - it was ambiguous. He could have meant academia: "by perpetuating laissez-faire economics, Universities fail to teach their students basic human dignity."

You see, when we revised the sentence, both times, we included a character and an action. Yes, sometimes the character must be an inanimate object or some institutional body, but the AGENT OF CHANGE is the star of the sentence.

When writing a sentence, strive to make agent of change the main character of the sentence.

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