Sentence-level Editing Techniques for Improved Cohesion, Clarity, and Flow
Discover how to enhance your writing through building ethos, improving cohesion, and ensuring clarity in your sentences. Explore techniques such as managing reader expectations, using metadiscourse words, and applying the Paramedic Method for clearer and more engaging writing.
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Presentation Transcript
Cohesion, Clarity and Flow: Concepts and Techniques for Sentence-level Editing
Greek rhetorical theory: ETHOS, LOGOS, PATHOS Greek rhetorical theory: ETHOS, LOGOS, PATHOS Arguably, ethos (character and integrity of author) is most important. How can one build one s ethos through writing style? Cohesion: Flow of text / Connection of sentences / Unity of paragraphs Clarity: Engaging / Clear agency / Lack of ambiguity / Speech quality Great references: Booth et al., The Craft of Research Peter Elbow, Writing with Power Peter Elbow, Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing
Cohesion: Cohesion: Unity of paragraphs Technique #1: Manage Reader Expectations 1. Set reader expectations by making a promise: In many countries one of the side effects of the second world war was to breed a generation that could not abide waste. After your promise sentence, your reader should be thinking prove it! or tell me more! 2. Satisfy reader expectation by fulfilling the promise: Newspapers, etc. were saved. Glass bottles were returned Most importantly, though, food was never, ever thrown away Here, parallelism and crescendo effect reinforce cohesion.
Cohesion: Cohesion: Connection of sentences Technique #2: Metadiscourse Words: Signals that clarify direction, promote order, relate ideas Thus / However, but / So / Nevertheless / First, next, finally / On one hand, on other hand Of course, these aren't so much legal arguments as political theater. And it's hardly surprising that, after eight years of insisting that the law doesn't apply to extremely bad people, opponents of Holder's decision are now focusing their arguments on the bad people, not the law. Still, it's awfully depressing to keep hearing * * *.
Clarity: Engaging / Clear agency / Lack of ambiguity / Speech quality ( orality ) Paramedic Method - Richard Lanham 1. Circle the prepositions (of) 2. Box the is forms (is, was, are ) 3. Ask, Where s the action? Who s kicking who? (Find the sentence s real subject) 4. Put the kicking action in a simple (not compound) active verb. 5. Turn any remaining prepositions into possessives, and any is forms into active voice, and any nominalized verbs into active verbs 6. Read aloud, with feeling can you now speak what you ve written in a natural manner, the way you d talk? (Reading your work out loud, as if you were presenting, is the single most effective way to make your writing clear and fluid.)
