Revising Sentences for Clarity
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Short Sentences
General Language
Specialized Language
Noun Strings
Prepositional Phrases
Punctuation Flaws
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Short Sentences
How old is the writer of the following passage?
I watched your show called Discovery. It was about spiders.
Don’t kill the spiders. I know you have to catch them for
medicine. But only catch some spiders. I just don’t think it’s
fair. Also, you have to be very, very careful around
tarantulas and black widows. Another reason why is
because if you hurt them they’ll hurt you. I like spiders. But
to tell you the truth, not very much.
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Short Sentences
Market conditions are very unstable. Business reacts
quickly to the price of pulp and paper. Capital spending by
pulp and paper mills is known to be cut off immediately that
pulp prices drop. Engineering projects can be stopped with
little notice. The technology is relatively stable. (Average
sentence length = 9 words.)
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Short Sentences
Market conditions are very unstable as indicated by how
quickly business reacts to the price of pulp and paper.
Because mills sometimes cut off capital spending
immediately when pulp prices drop, engineering projects
can be stopped with little notice. The technology is
relatively stable, however. (Average sentence length = 15
words.)
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Short Sentences
Leadership in an individual is the degree to which several
qualities are exhibited. These qualities include innovation,
organization and motivation. Our managers and associates
exhibit varying degrees of leadership but commonly are
high in innovation.
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Short Sentences
Individuals exhibit leadership through such qualities as
innovation, organization, and motivation are exhibited. Our
managers and associates exhibit varying degrees of
leadership but commonly are high in innovation.
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General Language
Approximately 60% of our work is of a repeat nature with
only minor variations. This repeat work is specifically of the
inspection and quality control type and does not require
higher education.
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General Language
Approximately 60% of our work involves repetitious
inspection and quality control that does not require higher
education.
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General Language
General Word
Aspect
Basically
Big/Little
Example Sentence
One aspect of the theory is correct.
Basically, the results were accurate.
There is a big difference between our results.
Clear/Unclear
The reason for the error is clear.
Good/Bad
Important
Interesting
Kind of/Sort of
Large/Small
More or less
Number of /Lots of
The accuracy of the measurements was quite good.
This is an important result.
This is an interesting idea.
The results are kind of confusing.
The results show a small deviation from theory.
The experiment went more or less as expected.
There are a number of problems with this approach.
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General Language (cont’d)
General Word
Partly
Perfectly
Situation
Somewhat
Thing
This
To a certain extent
To some degree
Type
Very much/Very little
Way
Example Sentence
My results were partly right.
The results are perfectly consistent with the theory.
The situation was unexpected.
I think the theory is somewhat misleading.
I learned two things in this experiment.
This was an inaccurate result.
To a certain extent, I was surprised by the results.
To some degree, the equipment malfunctioned.
This type of experiment is interesting.
Very much was learned from this experiment.
The way the values were obtained is incorrect.
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Example of Gobbledegook
In effect, it was hypothesized that certain physical data categories
including housing types and densities, land use characteristics, and
ecological location, constitute a scaleable content area. This could be
called a continuum of residential desirabilities. Likewise, it was
hypothesized that several social strata categories, describing the same
census tracts, and referring generally to the social stratification system
of the city, would also be scaleable. This scale could be called a
continuum of socioeconomic status. It was also hypothesized that there
would be a high positive correlation between the scale type of each
continuum.
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Gobbledegook Translated
Wealthy people live in nice homes in desirable
neighborhoods while poor people live in substandard
housing in run-down neighborhoods.
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Example of Doublespeak
To service the target, the theater was entered and a
package of ordnance was delivered. Subsequently, a BDA
was undertaken in order to assess the softening of enemy
assets. It was observed that the ordnance was incontinent
thereby leading to some collateral damage.
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Doublespeak Translated
We dropped bombs on the enemy and then later looked to
see if we killed them, but we missed and blew up civilians
instead.
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Suggestions for Using Acronyms
 Introduce acronyms, providing the words they replace
the first time you use them.
 Do not define common acronyms such as IBM or DOS
 Limit your use of acronyms, restricting the number in
individual sentences.
 Repeat the words acronyms replace periodically and use
few if any acronyms in introductions, conclusions,
abstracts, and executive summaries.
 Provide a glossary if your report has many acronyms.
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Acronyms
This letter provides a summary of the results of dispersion
modeling of ETBM emissions from the site, and a
description of the approaches taken to estimate the ETBM
emissions, to conduct the dispersion modeling and to
prepare the contour plots of ambient ethyl tertiary butyl
methylene (ETBM) concentrations
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Acronyms
This letter summarizes the results of dispersion modeling
the ethyl tertiary butyl methelyne (ETBM) emissions from
the site and describes the approaches for estimating ETBM
emissions, conducting dispersion modeling, and preparing
contour plots of ambient ETBM concentrations.
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Acronyms
Any requirements agreed upon by DOD and FAA after the
baseline of the SS and IRDs are placed into concept
papers called ORDDs.
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Acronyms
Any requirements agreed upon by DOD and FAA after the
baseline of the Segment Specifications and Interface
Requirement Documents are placed into concept papers
called ORDDs [????].
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Noun Strings
The parent company is a worldwide data network provider
service company.
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Noun Strings
The parent company is a service company that provides
data networks worldwide.
Or?
The parent company provides and services worldwide data
networks
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Noun Strings
The wind pattern was further illustrated following a recovery
boiler electrostatic precipitator fire at the site in 1988.
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Noun Strings
The wind pattern was further illustrated following a fire in
the electrostatic precipitator of a recovery boiler at the site
in 1988.
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Noun Strings
The dispersion model calculated twenty-four hour averaged
concentrations assume continuous operations over that
twenty-four hour period.
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Noun Strings
The averaged twenty-four hour concentrations calculated
using the dispersion model assume continuous operations
over that twenty-four hour period.
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Noun Strings
Because the predicted ambient total suspended particulate
concentrations met Department of Environment, Lands and
Parks' Level B ambient air quality objectives, a further
evaluation was not required.
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Noun Strings
Because the predicted total concentrations of ambient
suspended particulates met the level B ambient air quality
objectives mandated by the Department of Environment,
Lands and Parks, a further evaluation was not required.
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Noun Strings
Team members must understand that behavior oriented
activities are just as important as task oriented activities.
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Noun Strings
Team members must understand that behavior-oriented
activities are just as important as task-oriented activities.
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Noun Strings
Hence, a method must be devised to alleviate the slow
response performance problem.
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Noun Strings
Hence, a method must be devised to speed up the
response.
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Prepositional Phrases
More detailed analysis, using Cepstrum technique, is
applied based on computation of the power spectrum of the
logarithm of the power spectrum of the vibration data
obtained from the accelerometer on the truck frame in
different positions.
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Prepositional Phrases
A more detailed analysis uses Cepstrum technique to
compute the power spectrum as a logarithm of the various
vibration spectra measured by the accelerometer at
different positions on the truck's frame.
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Prepositional Phrases
Another component needed for the completion of the
project is the reassignment of project team members to the
next project and the rewarding of team members for their
role in the project.
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Prepositional Phrases
Another component needed to complete the project
involves reassigning project team members to the next
project and rewarding them for their role in the project.
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Prepositional Phrases
One example of the effects of such a lack of effective
strategies, project orientation, and interdepartmental
cooperation is our low morale.
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Prepositional Phrases
For example, because we lack effective strategies, project
orientation, and interdepartmental cooperation, our morale
is low.
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Prepositional Phrases
The emission requests cannot be accommodated at this
time because the emission inventory is neither sufficiently
advanced nor intended to allow for temporal variation or for
identification of a rationale for each occurrence of a high
emission rate and/or ambient concentrations.
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Prepositional Phrases
At this time, the emission requests cannot be
accommodated because the emission inventory is not
sufficiently advanced and does not allow for temporal
variations. Moreover, the inventory does not permit
identifying the cause of each high emission rate and/or
ambient concentration.
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Punctuation
A precision full-wave rectifier is constructed using precision
diodes and a square-wave generator is assembled using a
schmitt trigger.
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Punctuation
A precision full-wave rectifier is constructed using precision
diodes, and a square-wave generator is assembled using a
schmitt trigger.
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Punctuation
By participating more in scheduling release dates can be
planned so that projects dovetail.
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Punctuation
By participating more in scheduling, release dates can be
planned so that projects dovetail.
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