Friday, January 25, 2019

Rewrites

Fun! Michael at Orange Crate Art accepted my invitation to rewrite for clarity the clunky signs I posted yesterday


More, he wrote a whole post about the signs' language in his How to Improve Writing series "dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose". 

About the YMCA sign, "We serve relentlessly with our community until all can thrive in each stage of life", he points out:
"Eight of the fifteen words in the original sentence form prepositional phrases. That’s why the sentence sounds so ponderous." 
Read his post, "How to improve writing (no. 79)", here:
mleddy.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-improve-writing-no-79.html

My rewrites and thoughts are in the comments to his post.

2 comments:

Michael Leddy said...

Blogosphere fun!

I just realized that eight of the twelve words in the first sentence you quoted form prepositional phrases. So why (I’m asking myself) doesn’t that sentence sound clunky?

Fresca said...

MICHAEL: We share an idea of fun!

Which sentence are you referring to (the one with 8 of 12 words...)?