GET INTO SHAPE

1. GET INTO SHAPE LESSON 8 SHAPE

2. Understanding Sentence Shape • Writing entails both long and short sentences. • Think about creating longer more complex sentences without compromising quality or meaning. • Rework wordy confusion into shorter shapely coherence.

3. Example • To explain why Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds distrust one another today, historians must study not only age-old differences of ethnicity and religion, but all the other social, economic, and cultural conflicts that have plagued their 1300 years of troubled history. • In addition to differences in ethnicity or religion that have for centuries plagued Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, explanations of the causes of their distrust must include all of the other social, economic, and cultural conflicts that have plagued them that are rooted in a troubled history that extends 1300 years into the past.

4. Williams States, “Readers get a sense of shapeless length from four things…” • The sentence does not begin with a point. • It takes readers too long to get to the verb in the main clause. • After the verb, they have to slog through a shapeless sprawl of tacked-on subordinate clauses. • They are stopped by one interruption after another.

5. SO…How do we do it? • 1. Make your point clear and get to it. • 2. Revise long openings. • 3. Reshape Sprawl • 4. Make use of proper endings • 5. Improve quotation placement

6. SPRAWL: A sentence sprawls when after its verb and object it tacks on a series of subordinate clauses of the same kind (140). Consider these options • Cut: Reduce the use of relative clauses by deleting who that which and is/was etc. • Turn Subordinate clauses into independent sentences. • Change clauses to modifying phrases. • Resumptive Modifiers. • Summative Modifiers. • Free Modifiers.

7. THE MODIFIERS • Resumptive • Repeats the key word for emphasis. • He finally faced his biggest fear, a fear that had plagued him since he joined the team. • Summative • It sums up the idea of the sentence • Economic changes have reduced Russian population growth to less than zero, a demographic event that will have serious social implications.

8. Free Modifiers • Modifiers usually have “ing” or “ed” endings as a means of allowing you to extend the line of a sentence without collecting a bunch of ungainly phrases and clauses. They can also begin and end sentences. • He finally faced his biggest fear that had plagued him since he joined the team, eventually developing newfound confidence and taking top honors. • Free Modifiers can also begin with a past participle verb. • Driven by an insatiable curiosity, Leonardo da Vinci was an artist haunted by artistic perfection.

9. COORDINATION • Basically coordination aims to lengthen a sentence by combining terms. • Typical methods incorporate the Both/Andand the Not only/But construction.

10. Faulty Grammatical Coordination • Faulty rhetorical Coordination • Too many ands • Unclear Connections • When the reader loses track within sentence. • Ambiguous Modifiers • Questionable about is modified.

11. Weaving Quotes into your Text • Less than four lines gets placed into your paragraph • More than four lines necessitates an indented block. • Artless is the drop in… • It is more Graceful to weave the quote into the sentence. • Make sure to look at the information on page 154-155!!!

12. CONCISE REVIEW • Open the sentence with its point. • Get to the subject quickly • After the main clause avoid adding multiple subordinate clauses to each other. • End your sentence with appropriate emphasis • Work quotes into the flow of your sentence.

13. Write On… ~ FIN~