Mike Hannay en J. Lachlan Mackenzie - Effective Writing in English

1 Preliminaries

1.4.2 Complete sentences As we have seen, argued texts consist exclusively of statements. In order to achieve the desired effect on the unknown reader, you will need to present these in a form which is as explicit as possible. Written texts, in English at least, generally do not contain sentences which are grammatically incom plete. This means that: 1 they must contain a main clause, around which other clauses may be grouped; 2 the main clause must contain a subject and a finite verb. In other words, none of the following – each of which could occur as an inde pendent utterance in the spoken language – should occur in a written text in English: The first two examples do have a subject and a finite verb, but the sentences lack a main clause. Syntactically speaking, they are adverbial clauses (sig nalled by because and if respectively) and should be attached to the preced ing sentence in the text. The third example has neither a subject nor a finite verb: it should therefore either be attached to the preceding sentence in the clause or expanded into a full sentence with a subject and a finite verb like Other matters will be left for future consideration . The last example, which is reminiscent of a Dutch construction, can be rectified by adding the missing finite verb, placing is after the subject This . When you are speaking, you make continual use of the rise and fall of your voice to communicate all sorts of attitudes to what you are talking about. Your intonation will make it apparent to your listener whether you are enthu siastic or uninterested, serious or ironic, etc. Where you put the heaviest accent will indicate to the listener what you take to be the most important part of your message. As a writer, you have none of these devices at your disposal. What you do have, however, is time: time to think about the most effective way to com municate what you want to say. One of the major intentions of this book is to help you to use this time to good effect, by pointing out, for example, how Intonation versus syntactic organization ▲ Because the government would otherwise collapse. ▲ Certainly if there is no improvement. ▲ Leaving other matters for future consideration. ▲ This to ensure that the desired effect is obtained.

1.5

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