Strengthen Your Writing: Vary Sentence Structure

George P. Landow

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Try varying the structure of your sentences. If you find that your sentences follow the following formula —SUBJECT VERB1 [clause] and VERB2 [clause] — "See Jane run and see Dick run" — use several alternative structures.

BORING when repeated too often: "Dickens had felt himself alone and abandoned as a child, AND he made many of his protagonists orphans."

(a) Alternative that emphasizes subordination of one thought or fact to another: "Dickens, WHO had felt himself alone and abandoned, made many of his protagonists orphans."

(b) Alternative that emphasizes causality: "BECAUSE Dickens felt abandoned as a child, he made many of his protagonists orphans."

(c) Alternative that emphasizes relations of time or sequence: "AFTER Dickens had felt abandoned as a child, he made many of his protagonists orphans."

Related Resources

• Some Easy Ways to Strengthen Your Writing: Ways to Avoid To Be and Passive Constructions
• Strengthen Your Writing: Avoid stringing together clumps of abstract nouns with prepositions
• Punctuation Matters and Matters of Punctuation
• Some Common Errors of Diction, or Diction Matters
• Introducing Quoted Material

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Last modified 4 December 2006