Clarity, Part 2

In the following post, I will describe four more sections I read about within the Rules for Writer's book. The four more sections are: variety, emphasis, appropriate language, and exact words.

Remi. "typewriter". 03/17/2009 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

Variety: This part of the book showed me how to add some variety to my sentences, as I tend to stick to complex and compound sentences, rather than simple sentences. Simple sentences could help me majorly make my writing easier to read and or skim, but getting in the habit is hard. Reading this section was helpful and informative.

Emphasis: This section talked about how, depending on the wording and structure of your sentence, you can derive completely different meanings. I knew this beforehand, especially with a bit of music background that can be applied here, but going over it again was definitely helpful. My music teacher in high school talked about this concept often.

Appropriate Language: This section helped me see how to use the right language for the genre and not to get to science-y with terms. I am trying to stick to high school biology terms as much as possible, as my controversy is deeply intertwined with complex genome science. I think I am doing an okay job so far, and that a general audience should know what I am talking about.

Exact words: This section mainly talked about how to choose words that give very precise meaning to whatever I am talking about, and to stick with words that have positive or negative connotations, depending on what I am talking and what the subject requires. This advice will help me make my writing more concise and to the point.

Using exact words, I changed this sentence:

"Scientists in China have semi-successfully performed experiments on living human embryos in order to test the viability of  new technology, and the results were not very good, but there were results."

To this:

"A group of scientists in China performed experiments on living non-viable human embryos in order to test the viability of this new technology, called CRISPR-cas9, and the results were promising."

The second version is smoother and flows better, once I took out the word semi-successful, added 'this' before 'new technology', and replaced 'not very good, but there were results' with 'promising'. It helped me get my point across clearer.

Using variety, I changed this sentence:

"However, many also support this research, as it has the power to change humankind and lessen the impact of diseases and illnesses globally."

To this:

"There is a range of good deeds that can come from this. Most importantly and apparent, is the power to change humankind and lessen the impact of diseases and illnesses globally."

The second version has a smoother flow and reads nicer than the first. Splitting up the sentence into two parts was certainly helpful, and had a nice effect on the overall read. Adding the bit of variety of sentence structure goes a long way.