Topics: Editing Tech Pubs for Style
14 July 2009
(472_090714_Sentences.doc)
Sentence and paragraph development notes
Review of research on paragraphing
Review of required and suggested reading:
Required reading
TWS, Chapter 7, "Creating Sentences with Style," 144-162.
TWS, Chapter 8, "Structuring Paragraphs and Other Segments," 163-186.
Christensen, Francis. 1963. A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence. College Composition and
Communication, 14 (3): 155-161. [E-reserves]
Christensen, Francis. 1965. A Generative Rhetoric of the Paragraph. College Composition
and Communication, 16 (3): 144-156. [E-reserves]
Required reading for Eng 572 students only.
Duncan , M. 2007. Whatever happened to the paragraph? College English 69 (5): 470-495.
[E-reserves]
Harris, R. 2006. Five ‘effective writing' rules to unlearn. The Editorial Eye 29 (10): 1-4.
[E-reserves]
Isakson, Carol, and Jan Spyridakis. 1999. The influence of semantics and syntax on what
readers remember. Technical Communication 46 (3): 366-381.
Further reading
TE, Chapter 15, "Style: Definition and Sentence Structures," 250-265
TE, Chapter 16, "Style: Verbs and Other Words," 266- 283
Braddock, Richard. 1974. The frequency and placement of topic sentences in expository
prose. Research in the Teaching of English 8: 287–302.
D’Angelo, Frank. 1986. The topic sentence revisited. CCC 37: 431-441.
Gopen, George. 2004. Expectations: Teaching writing from the reader’s perspective.
New York: Longman.
Markel, Mike, M. Vaccaro, and T. Hewett. 1992. Effects of paragraph length on attitudes
toward technical writing. Technical Communication 39 (3): 454-456.
Rodgers, Paul. 1966. A discourse-centered rhetoric of the paragraph. CCC 17: 2-11.
Rodgers, Paul. 1967. The stadium of discourse. CCC 18: 178-85.
Online resources
E-prime
Wilson, Robert Anton. n.d. Toward understanding E-prime NoBeliefs.com 16 July 2007.
Topics: Editing Tech Pubs for Style
14 July 2009
Ward, Ken. n.d. E-prime: English without the verb to be. Tools for Transformation.
16 July 2007.
Dan Scorpio, Dan. n.d. E-prime tutorial. Dan Scorpio NLP, Language Pattern and
Consciousness. 16 July 2007.
Paragraphing
Crafting paragraphs. 7 February 2007. The Writing Center at Cleveland State University.
11 July 2007.
“A paragraph is a group of sentences that are related to each other because they all refer to a
controlling idea; this idea is often expressed in a topic sentence, a sentence that functions in a
paragraph much like a thesis statement functions in a paper.” (First sentence)
OWL family of sites. 2007. Purdue. 11 July 2007.
Provides links to pages on paragraphs (providing a definition emphasizing unity, coherence, a topic
sentence, and adequate development) and paragraphing (providing advice regarding the creation
of understandable and coherent paragraphs).
Paragraph development. 2005. UNC Writing Center. 11 July 2007.
Paragraphs. n.d. WritingDen. 11 July 2007.
This site appears on the first page of the SERP when I searched Google for paragraphing.
Examine the page closely: Who is the audience for this page/site? What is the quality of the advice
given about paragraphing?
Tracy Duckart. n.d. Paragraphing: The art of the expository paragraph. Tracy Duckart's
Instructional Website at Humboldt State University. 11 July 2007.
Topics: Editing Tech Pubs for Style
14 July 2009
Jones’ Technical Writing Style
The following vocabulary and list of writing styles were taken from Chapters 7-8 of Jones’
Technical Writing Style. All page references are to his text.
Vocabulary
You are responsible for the following vocabulary:
phrases –
clauses –
simple sentences –
compound sentences –
complex sentences –
compound-complex sentences –
comma splices –
fused sentences –
run-on sentences –
dangling modifiers –
Styles
You should be able to recognize the following sentence styles:
periodic sentences –
balanced sentences –

parallelism –

antithesis and symmetry (chiasmus) –
loose (cumulative) sentences –
You should be able to recognize the following sentence elements and sentence combining
techniques:
coordination –
subordination –
relative clauses –
appositives –
participial phrases –
absolutes –
noun substitutes –
addition/deletion –
rearrangement –
Topics: Editing Tech Pubs for Style
14 July 2009
Quiz
You have 20 minutes for this quiz. You may use your texts; however, if you do quote, paraphrase,
or summarize information from any of your texts, please cite the source (title and page
parenthetically). Please write as much as you can as quickly as you can.
1. Explain the title of Christensen’s article: “A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence.”
2. Briefly summarize Isakson and Spyridakis’”The Influence of Semantics and Syntax on
What Readers Remember.” One of their specific recommendations is that “writers should
place that information in relative clauses at the end of the sentence (if using relative
clauses)” (emphasis mine; 377). Explain that recommendation.
3. Distinguish between periodic, balanced, and loose sentences. Provide (original)
examples of each.
Topics: Editing Tech Pubs for Style
14 July 2009
Small-group assignments
Elect one person to assemble your document for the group, cutting and pasting your responses
from this document into the body of an (HTML) email message. Include “Eng 4/572 -- Sentences
and paragraphs” on the subject line, and CC all group members.
Please complete the following tasks:
1. In the following passage, identify the sentences by their form: simple, compound,
complex, and compound-complex (TWS, Chapter 7, Exercise 1, page 159). In addition,
identify appropriate sentences as periodic, balanced, or loose.
Everyone needs an owner’s manual for the car and the house. 2Now we have one for
the body, but if it shares the fate of most owners’ manuals, a place at the bottom of a
drawer, you will not profit very much. 3If the owners of such manuals read about the care,
repair and maintenance of their possessions, there would be fewer ripoffs, less disaster,
not to mention totaled mechanisms. 4Where the human body is concerned, this is trebly
true. 5Most diseases are inflicted by less than healthy life-styles, but most pain could be
eased or erased if there were a thorough understanding of how pain progresses as well
as how to prevent it in the first place.
1
1–
2–
3–
4–
5–
2. Comment on Bill Gate’s writing style based on the following two introductory paragraphs
from his chapter entitled “Business on the Internet.”1
Over the next decade, businesses worldwide will be transformed. Intranets will
revolutionize the way companies share information internally, and the Internet will
revolutionize how they communicate externally. Corporations will redesign their nervous
systems to rely on the networks that reach every member of the organization and beyond
into the world of suppliers, consultants, and customers. These changes will let companies
be more effective and often smaller. In the longer run, as broadband networks make
physical proximity to urban services less essential, many businesses will decentralize
and disperse their activities, and cities may be downsized too.
Businesses welcome information technology because long-term success in business
depends on improving productivity. Network connections and a greater use of electronic
documents promise companies benefits such as Web publishing, videoconferencing,
e-mail, flexible ways of viewing data, and easier collaboration among staff, suppliers, and
customers worldwide. Even the smallest businesses will share in the commercial
advantages of information technology.
1
Taken from The Road Ahead (New York: Penguin, 1996), 153.
Topics: Editing Tech Pubs for Style
14 July 2009
3.0 Following Christensen’s examples and using the following text from his article, analyze
his sentences by indenting the word groups and numbering the levels. The first example
is Christensen’s.2 Kudos if you can identify the modifiers, though you are need not do so.
SC = subordinate clause
RC = relative clause
NC = noun cluster
VC = verb cluster
AC = adjective cluster
A+A = adjective series
Abs = absolute
PP = prepositional phrase
Press Tab to indent lines.
3.1 He dipped his hands in the bichloride solution and shook them, a quick shake, fingers
down, like the fingers of a pianist above the keys.
1 He dipped his hands in the bichloride solution and shook them,
2 a quick shake, (NC)
3 fingers down, (Abs)
4 like the fingers of a pianist above the keys. (PP)
3.2 Its use in teaching composition rests on a semantic confusion, equating complexity of
structure with complexity of thought and vice versa (3)
Its use in teaching composition rests on a semantic confusion, equating complexity of
structure with complexity of thought and vice versa.
3.3 One of the marks of an effective style, especially in narrative, is variety in the texture, the
texture varying with the change in pace, the variation in texture producing the change in
pace (8).
One of the marks of an effective style, especially in narrative, is variety in the texture, the
texture varying with the change in pace, the variation in texture producing the change in
pace.
3.4 The discipline comes with the additions, provided they are based at first on immediate
observation, requiring the student to phrase an exact observation in exact language.
The discipline comes with the additions, provided they are based at first on immediate
observation, requiring the student to phrase an exact observation in exact language.
4.0 Finally, complete the following (cumulative) sentences, being as creative or whimsical as
you wish, but remaining faithful to Christensen’s method:
4.1 The writer paused,
4.2 The window inexplicably closed,
4.3 After a tough night in the online chat, Jay shut down the computer,
2
The sentence was written by Sinclair Lewis; Christensen’s analysis appears on page 9.