Clarity, Part 2

For this blog post I will identify four more topics in the Clarity section of Rules for Writers.  I will briefly discuss what I learned from these four topics, focusing on what I found to be new information or surprising to me.

Wdwdbot. "SRS Dialog Clarity". 25 May 2015 via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain 

Topic 1:
The first topic from the Clarity section that I have chosen to learn more about is the "Add needed words" section.  I already incorporated a few examples of this topic in my paper, but I want to discuss it in further detail.  An example of how I already used an example from this topic goes as follows, "A belief that I share with students who study science, is wanting to learn about ways to improve the quality of people’s, animal’s, and the world’s lives."  In this case, I added a word that is needed to complete a compound structure.  By using the word "who" in this sentences makes the sentence grammatically correct.

Topic 2:
The second topic that I studied more about was "Eliminate distracting shifts".  One of the key takeaways from this section is making sure that as a writer, you make the point of view consistent in what the type of person (first, second, or third) and the number of this subject is.  I already incorporated an example of correctly following this sub-topic in my paper.  The example is as follows, "Certainly the spectacle of seeing species that do not exist in our time period could be exciting."  This sentence needs the word "our" to be used there because I am referring to the first person in the overall structure of the sentence.  Using a different point of view in here would have the sentence sound incorrect (ie. your).

Topic 3:
The next topic that I looked more closely at is "Untangle mixed constructions".  An example of a sentence that I will use has been revised so that I could untangle the grammatical structure.  Prior to revision, the sentence I chose started off in a way that did not make logic sense in its grammatical
structure. That sentence goes as follows, " By using a tone that illustrates one way de-extinction may be ethical, Cohen helps give readers one of the different viewpoints to see to help them decide whether or not the entire process of de-extinction is ethical."  Starting off the sentence with "By using a tone that illustrates..." does not make as much sense in a grammatical sense compared to just saying "Using a tone..."  Here is the revised sentence, "Using a tone that is informative and connects sections of text together, Cohen helps give readers one of the different viewpoints to see to help them decide whether or not the entire process of de-extinction is ethical."  By changing the beginning of the sentence as well as parts of it, I untangled the grammatical structure and made it look more correct and more appealing to the reader.

 Topic 4:
The last topic that I studied closely was "Choose appropriate language".  One area where I believe I excelled in was avoiding sexist language.  An example of where I used appropriate language goes as follows, "They could perhaps be carriers of new disease-causing agents that could harm other species, as well as humans." By using the word "humans" at the end, I correctly state the sentence. If I were to say mankind instead, this would be an incorrect way of completing the sentence.

Overall, by closely studying this section in my book, I learned that I could use the information I read about to fix the minor errors that I have in my analysis. I also found it surprising that I followed the correct rules of the sections I chose and I did not have to revise too many parts in my analysis.