Sharpen Your Sentences and Clarify Your Writing

Using the Strategy Called "Sentence Focus"
By Jerry Karp

Perhaps you know this feeling: you've just written something important, a report or an essay that has to be excellent. You're reading it over and some of your sentences are just not working. All your facts are right, and your sentences are “correct” grammatically, but somehow things just don't seem to be flowing the way you want them to. You look at the words until they start to swim on the page, but you're just not sure you're presenting your information and your thoughts as clearly as you need to.

“I'm not a professional writer,” you may think. “How do I fix this?”

Well, here are some tips on how to keep your sentences sharp and your ideas clear, so your readers will move through your written work more easily, and understand your points more completely. These are not cure-alls for every writing problem, but together they constitute a relatively straightforward strategy for improving your written work. Back in my days teaching English Composition, we used to call this strategy “Sentence Focus,” and basically, it consists of taking a look at the subject* and verb of each sentence to make sure they're doing their jobs correctly.

The Basics—Subjects and Verbs

The subject and the verb form the foundation of each sentence. So if the sentence isn't working, or if you're not sure whether it's working or not, the subject and verb are a good place to start. Here are three rules of thumb:

1. The subject of each sentence should be the “agent of the action” taking place. In other words, it should show you who is actually performing the action you're describing.
2. Concrete, specific subjects are almost always better than an abstract, general ones.
3. Use “active” verbs, rather than “to be,” whenever possible.

OK, what am I talking about? Let's take a look at this sentence:


This is the kind of sentence that makes a reader's eyes water. It's grammatically correct, but the meaning is not readily apparent because the writer's real information is hidden behind abstractions. That becomes an issue if the reader has to stop, even if just for a split second, and figure out the writer's intent. A pageful of such stumbling blocks can frustrate your reader immensely.

Jerry: In the above sentence, it is not clear to the reader how the sentence can make perfect sense while at the same time, have a meaning that is “not readily apparent”. I’d just take off the perfect sense part (as indicated above).

Concrete Subjects

The subject of our sample sentence is “incidence.” Not exactly a specific or concrete subject. In fact, it's pretty vague. Ever seen an “incidence?” Who's the “agent of the action” in this sentence? Again, what is the action being performed and who is performing it? Well, we're talking about moonlighting in academia. Who would that be? Let's try some revisions:


Or


Now the subject is specific and concrete: “instructors and professors,” the people who are actually doing the moonlighting. The differences between the original and the two rewrites may not seem that dramatic. After all, your reader can figure out who's doing the moonlighting in the original. But in the second sentence, the reader doesn't have to figure out anything, so you've saved that reader a step. Over a paragraph, a page or an article, that will add up to an easier, more enjoyable reading experience. As a writer, that's what you want.

Obviously, you've changed more than just the subject. But by starting with the subject and working your way outward, it becomes easier to see the additional changes that will make your sentences better.

Active Verbs

How does looking at the verb help us? In our first sentence


the verb was “is.” Why is that an issue? Well, think of the verb “to be” (is, was, will be) as an equal sign (=). It's a placeholder, really, indicating that two ideas or conditions are more or less coexisting, or that one can be ascribed to another. The sentence “Mary is athletic” doesn't describe an action, just a state of being. “Mary runs a four-minute mile” describes an action quite vividly. In one of our rewrites, we came up with:


Now the verb is “moonlight,” a word that describes a very particular activity. So our sentence is now much more clearly showing us who (college instructors and professors) is doing what (moonlighting).

An Effective Revision

In terms of the core subject and verb—the basic comprehension elements of the sentence—we've gone from:


to


Which has the clearer meaning? Obviously, not all of a sentence's information is contained within these elements, but building a sentence on a solid framework of ideas is one key to clear writing.

Over the course of a page or even a paragraph, focusing your sentences directly onto the “agent of the action” with more concrete subjects and active verbs can really make a difference in the ease with which your readers move through your writing and understand the points you're making.

The Exceptions

Sentence Focus represents a set of guidelines only. These aren't commandments. For example:

1) Sometimes you're talking about a global concept, so a more “general” subject is indeed what you need:


“Vanity” can certainly be considered a “general” idea rather than a “concrete” subject, but in this case, we actually are talking about vanity and the effect it can have. (In our original sentence, we were not discussing the subject of “incidence.”)

2) “To be” is, of course, sometimes exactly the verb you need. The preceding sentence would be one example. Here's another:


I suppose you could say, “A big toe, when submerged into the water, will experience a sensation of coldness.” But you're not really talking about anyone's big toe. You're talking about that water. When you're simply describing a condition, that equal sign “to be” makes sense. If in doubt, think of it this way: when the subject of your sentence is in fact the person, place or thing that you want to describe, the right verb will generally make itself evident. So look to the subject first, and then the verb.

Maximizing the Strategy

Sentence Focus works best, in my book, as a revision tool. You will drive yourself nuts worrying about this stuff as you're writing your initial draft, especially while you're still getting used to the idea. Get your first draft down on paper (or computer screen), and then go back over it, looking at, among other things, the subjects and verbs of your sentences. Good writing is all about revision, anyway, but now you have a definite strategy to help you get the most out of your rewrite process. Sentence Focus, obviously, isn't going to fix every difficulty you might have with your writing, but it is one tangible area where you can do yourself some good.

I hope that helps. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions on this subject.

* A bit of review: By “the subject of each sentence,” I don't mean the sentence's subject matter (what it's about). I'm talking about the grammatical subject. Remember subject/verb agreement from grade school? Sure you do. “The dog ate the bone.” The subject is “dog,” the verb is “ate,” and the direct object is “bone.” Back to top

« Go back