Clarity Part 2

For this blog post I have read 4 more sections on clarity and will be talking about what I learned about them. I will also be going through my own paper and then discussing the clarity mistakes I tend to make and discuss what I learn about my clarity topics from reading my essay.

Zorbis, Marcus, "Clear Water" uploaded 29 December 2006, Attribution Non-commercial 2.0 generic.

Parallel Ideas

For parallel ideas, I learned that the most important thing about them is balance. I was surprised by how much they are used in everyday language. Their most important function is emphasis and making the sentence flow naturally. The also connect object and actions that are in this parallel structure and make them interact in some form.

Needed Words

Needed words are often used when there is a confusion between what is being compared or there is a subject doing something to an object but was not intended to read that way.  I realized how often I do this in my writing because I assume the reader will know what my intended meaning is when writing. The most helpful thing from this section is to be direct about what you really mean. Do not let the reader guess your meaning.

Variety

In this section the most important thing I learned is to vary how I open my sentences and vary the sentence structures themselves. It makes it so much easier to read through a paragraph that has varied sentences than it is to read through the same sentences over and over.  One thing that I had never though of was inverting the sentences so that it add even more variety.

Exact Words

Exact word are able to convey the  same meaning in less words than a phrase. In doing so the meaning of the sentence becomes more grounded and less wordy. To do so the most important thing is to use concrete nouns where possibly.  I had never thought that being exact in the language I use could drastically alter the meaning and flow of my sentences. It also never occurred to me that the connotations of a word could have such a drastic impact on what meaning is being conveyed.

Response

"The debate could go on for a couple more months or years." This sentence came up at the end of my QRG and I realized it was not parallel tank to the help of Chelsea. After reading through the sentence several times I realized that it didn't really carry as much power as I wanted it to. After correcting the mistake to "The debate could go on for several months or for several years." the sentence seemed to flow much better, seemed less clunky and carried a lot more power than before.

Another example of a mistake I found was when I used exact words incorrectly. In the sentence, "In the comment section of a link to the controversial article two users, ididnoteatyourcat, who is verified as an expert in particle physics, and Wigners_Friend, who is a two year reddit user, debate the problems both with Silk and Ellis’s reasoning and string theorists" the word expert is not what I necessarily meant. By replacing "verified as an expert" with "knowledgeable" it still makes it seem like he knows what he is talking about in the comment, but is not known how much knowledgeable in the field he is. This is what I meant because reddit does not tell you how knowledgeable the person is in the field, just that they are.