SENTENCES: PATTERNS OF EXPRESSION
Exercises #1
Drawing on your own experience, expand the two basic sentences below to make them fuller expressions of the ideas
they suggest to you.
o
o
My doctor always seems impatient.
Doctors study the human body.
Exercise # 2
By combining parts through coordination, compress the sentences in each group into a single sentence.
1. Many young people cannot afford college tuition.
The expense of living away from home also keeps them from going to college.
2. Coronary heart disease is the major cause of death in this country.
Cancer also causes many deaths.
3. Journalism is an overcrowded field just now.
Currently there are more licensed secondary school teachers then there are positions.
The legal profession is overcrowded.
4. My doctor warned me about trying to lose weight too fast.
My coach reminded me of the danger involved.
My mother told me the same thing.
Exercise #3
1. The notes that follow, list the distinguishing characteristics of people who exhibit Type A and Type B behavior.
Organize the items into parallel lists, and then write a parallel sentence coordinating the information in the two
series.
Type A Behavior
Type B Behavior
Obsessed with deadlines
Evokes serenity in others
Intense need to win at all costs
Enjoys creating images and metaphors
Conversation dominated by numbers
Secure sense of self-esteem
Harshly critical of others
Rarely wears a watch
Exercise #4
Practice creating denser sentences through subordination by reducing each of the following sets of sentences to a single
sentence omitting any of the information.
1.
Scientists use guinea pigs in their laboratory experiments.
They inject them with a disease.
They observe their behavior.
They dissect them
They examine the effect of the disease on their organs.
2. Michelangelo studied anatomy.
He dissected cadavers.
Such gruesome work helped him understand human bones and muscles.
His sculptures celebrate the human body.
3. X-rays can penetrate the human body.
They produce images on photographic film.
Shadows on the picture reveal changes in body tissue.
4. The early history of medicine is filled with guesswork.
Doctors did not know what caused disease.
They developed cures through trial and error.
Most of the cures did not work.
Cures that worked were considered magical.
5. People went to spas to restore their health.
Most spas were located in beautiful settings.
They featured special mineral waters.
The waters were supposed to purge the body of disease.
These watering spots developed into vacation resorts.
Exercise #5
Compose a sentence about each item in each pair. Then combine the two sentences into a balanced sentence.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Jogging
Doctors
Smokers
Pain
Painting
Mural
swimming
dentist
nonsmokers
stress
photograph
miniature
Exercise #6
Write a periodic sentence describing the most frustrating, fulfilling, or comic day you have had recently. Use your
opening clauses to build suspense and reveal your final assertion in the last clause. Then reverse this order and write a
cumulative sentence. Make your assertion first and then accumulate detailed examples. Which pattern is more
effective? Explain your answer.
Exercise #7
Simplify the structure of the following sentences to make them easier to read.
1.
A controversy has centered on a commonly used herbicide called 2-4-5-T, with producers insisting that it is not
harmful on humans but with independent researchers saying there is evidence that it can contribute to
miscarriages and development of cancer, among other problems, in people exposed to it, and the controversy
has been highly publicized recently because the herbicide is similar in its chemical make-up to the defoliant used
by the American military in Vietnam that is now suspected of causing cancer and other serious diseases in
people who were exposed to it there.
2. For centuries artists have known that the paint that they keep in their studios and that they allow to collect on
clothing, and that they are constantly touching and breathing, so that it penetrates their skin and gets into their
blood stream, contains lead, which can poison them, causing them to have convulsive cramps, fatigue, and
making them look sickly by comparison to the portraits of the healthy subject they paint.
3. In the movies, artists are often portrayed as tormented and anguished people who live in poverty and squalor
that causes them to contract all sorts of strange diseases that make them suffer so that they become more
sensitive than normal people, which enables them to create beautiful art in the midst of their illness, even
though they have to die for their art and only become famous once they are dead.
Exercise #8
Revise the order of each sentence to emphasize the points you think most important.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
He said that the United Nations had failed in its chief function, to preserve peace, although it had done much of
which could be proud in the areas of health and literacy and was still performing valuable services in other
areas.
It is entirely possible that longevity depends on the luck of your genes, I sometimes think.
A proposal that has caused much discussion about our national health policy is the one about insurance for
catastrophic illness that is now before Congress.
A problem that is important to our environment, noise pollution, is one that we have only recently given much
attention to.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, even when he was ninety, worked in his clinic all day and played his piano at night
because he believed that a sense of purpose and creativity was the best medicine for any illness he might have.
Exercise #9
Revise the following sentences by changing passive verbs to the active voice.
1.
Changing the criteria for what people consider ugly has been proposed by critics as the goal of much modern
art.
2. It must surely be recognized by the American Hospital Association that such coasts cannot be afforded by many
families.
3. The critics said that the winners in the photographic competition would be announced by her within three days.
4. One the danger was gone, the safety precautions that had been so carefully observed by us were abandoned.
Exercise # 10
Eliminate wordiness in the following sentences.
1.
As far as the average citizen is concerned, it is probable that most people are not greatly concerned with the
latest critical reaction to the new fads in the world of art.
2. When we studied defense mechanisms, which we did in our psychology class, I discovered that I use most of the
mechanisms that are discussed in the textbook.
3. Concerning the question of whether men are stronger than women, it seems to me that the answer is variable,
depending on how one interprets the word stronger.
4. When, after much careful and painstaking study of the many and various problems involved, the administrators
in charge of the different phases of the operation of the hospital made the decision to build a rehabilitation
center for patients with all sorts of disabilities, a completely new staff of doctors, nurses, and physical therapists
had to be hired.
Review Exercises
1.
Edit the following paragraph into a more effective statement. First read the paragraph as a whole. Then go
over it sentence by sentence, making whatever changes you think desirable. Finally, rewrite the paragraph
in its revised form.
One of the conceptions not founded in the fact that they don’t possess the skills necessary to draw a landscape or a
face. In fact, most abstract painters have developed that ability to be extremely adept at drawing objects and people
with photographic accuracy. Instead of painting such realistic portraits, however, they design thickly woven textures of
paint that enable them to create more universal symbols that express aspects of all human experience. Some of these
symbol are called “biomorphic” because they appear to resemble organic forms or fragments of human anatomy
sandwiched into densely packed spatial landscapes. These symbols area often interpreted to express the abstract
painter’s sense of fragmentation in modern society.
2. Revise these sentences into an effective, coherent paragraph on surgeons, using ALL the information
provided.
a. Surgeons are revered as medical priests.
b. They are cloaked and masked in green vestments.
c. They have acquired a secret knowledge.
d. They are given absolute authority over life and death.
e. They cut the human body with special tools.
f. The eliminate disease.
g. They stitch the body together.
h. They wash their hands after the ritual.
i. The people they restore to health view the progress as a miracle.