Re: writing style -- JAC Forum

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Subject: Re: writing style

Author:
Jake

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Date Posted: 15:08:24 04/29/03 Tue
In reply to: Adrian 's message, "Re: Japan in WW2" on 08:42:07 04/29/03 Tue

>> The message here is the very belief that Oe
>>criticizes the American government for holding, that
>>the bomb would create hell, but not one from which
>>humanity would be unable to recover.
>
>This sentence is too convoluted. You need to split it
>up into two sentences. Otherwise it confuses the
>reader and stops the entire flow of the paragraph.
>
>In fact, several of your sentences are too convoluted.
> I would suggest shorter paragraphs and shorter
>sentences. Your points get lost in a tangle of words,
>and the reader is forced to go back up and reconstruct
>them at the end of each paragraph.

This wasn't intended to be a critique of my writing style, but I'll respond to this anyway. I agree that some of my sentences (although a minority) could be shortened, and that the paragraphs could definitely be shortened. And if this had been a formal paper, I probably would have done so; but this was a more informal "online journal entry." And despite the complexity of my sentences, I find them generally easy to read; and so have all of my past professors and honors English teachers in high school. But then I came from an English background that encouraged complexity of sentence structure.

As far as that particular sentence, I agree it could use some work; but I don't like it as two sentences. How about this? "The message here is the same belief that Oe criticizes the American government for holding: the belief that the bomb would create hell, but not a hell from which humanity would be unable to recover."

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Re: writing style	Adrian	11:28:28 05/02/03 Fri
Re: writing style -- Jake, 15:30:00 05/02/03 Fri