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Midsentence injection deserves its own thread. Is it a trend, or am I just noticing it more? It's hard on the brain, because you have to hold the first part of
by combatentropy 9y ago
Midsentence injection deserves its own thread. Is it a trend, or am I just noticing it more? It's hard on the brain, because you have to hold the first part of the sentence in memory while you take in the interruption. Your example is great, the one about the security vulnerability. Your revisions are much better in all cases.
It's actually my first impulse to inject these midsentence clauses. Is it because of a short attention span, or is it a fear of someone raising an objection if I don't qualify every statement?
- pash 9y agoI do it too, when I’m being lazy. It simply requires more effort to order one’s thoughts well. The best reference on style I know in this regard is Joseph Williams’s book Style: Toward Clarity and Grace [0]. The book explains how to analyze your own writing to lessen the mental burden on the reader, mainly by re-writing your sentences so that there is a natural logical flow from subject to predicate to object, with detail added in phrases that don’t get in the way. 0. https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM1990StyleTowardClarityandGrace.pdf https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM199... [PDF]
- anjbe 9y agoThere was a fascinating article recently about sentence complexity and embedded clauses in language: https://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-english-sentence https://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/the-rise-and-fall-of...
- therealdrag0 9y agoYour comment reminds me of the book "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century" by Steven Pinker. I highly recommend it. He talks about the effect of sentence flow on the brain and how sentences can be simplified.