Topic: Sentence Structure and Style

10-second review: Thomas Kane: “Good sentences are the sinew of style.” What is wrong with the following sentences?

Title: “Sentence makeovers.” Arthur Plotnik. The Writer (December 2004), 15-16. The Writer is a magazine by writers for writers.

Faulty Sentences: Can you make the following sentences better?

1. “She asked what writing was all about, who could answer?”

2. “Manny could not, in spite of all his training, knowing that the platoon depended on him, even with the enemy in his cross hairs, fire.”

3. “There were outcries by the people for more Krispy Kremes.”

4. “She had a yellow forked tongue. Its papillae were poisonous.”

5. “Suspended from the very catalpa that she had climbed as a child, she saw his body swaying.”

6. “About one out of every four or five women of that village get married.”

7. “The body was discovered in the library; later, the identification was done.”

8. “Because the publisher did not act decisively, the book was not in any position to succeed in the chain stores.”

9. “She was of an opinion that all one could ever be for was truth, and not for any sort of compromise.”

Next blog: The fixes. RayS.