{"id":1091,"date":"2017-11-21T09:19:28","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T17:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.obviouseditor.com\/?p=1091"},"modified":"2023-08-22T21:00:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-23T04:00:53","slug":"splitsville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/1091\/","title":{"rendered":"Sentence stuffing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do some journalists feel compelled to stuff their entire thesis into a single sentence?<\/p>\n

The time to advocate against zoning laws in Houston that left the city more prone to flooding during Hurricane Harvey is now. – The Guardian<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t know about you, but by the time I reached the end of the sentence, I had forgotten what the subject of ‘is’ was (it was ‘The time’. The time is now). Why can’t the authors be a little bit nicer to me and my fading short-term memory? After all, they do want me to understand their thesis.<\/p>\n

Is this what they were trying to say?<\/p>\n

Zoning laws in Houston left the city more prone to flooding during Hurricane Harvey. It is time to advocate against these laws.<\/span><\/p>\n

Isn’t that better? Freed of the onerous single-sentence requirement, the authors might even have penned this:<\/p>\n

It’s time we advocate against the existing ineffective zoning laws in Houston. They left the city open to intense flooding from Hurricane Harvey.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or this:<\/p>\n

Lax zoning laws in Houston left the city open to intense flooding from Hurricane Harvey. Down with those laws. They gotta go.<\/span><\/p>\n

OK, maybe not that one, not for an impartial journalist. But wait, the original quote comes from an opinion piece. Coming down on one side of an issue: that is expected. And look at that final sentence. Three words. Very often, the shortest sentence is the most effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do some journalists feel compelled to stuff their entire thesis into a single sentence? The time to advocate against zoning laws in Houston that left the city more prone to flooding during Hurricane Harvey is now. – The Guardian I don’t know about you, but by the time I reached the end of the … <\/p>\n

See entire post “Sentence stuffing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,58,61,56],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3365,"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions\/3365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/informalenglish.com\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}