What is a good sentence?
There are many answers. In this lesson, you will create good sentences by practicing an important composition skill: editing.
Some of my composition students think that writing many words makes a good essay or sentence. How wrong. So, so wrong.
A great sentence tells the reader your idea without lots of extra words. In fact, the fewer the words, the better!
No Fat
A sentence with too many words is like eating a hamburger with too much fat. A little fat is okay. But, too much fat doesn’t look good. It doesn’t taste good, either. So you have to learn how to cut of the fat from your sentences.
Here is an example: John is employed and works for the company Samsung.
This sentence is like a hamburger from a fast food restaurant. Way too much greasy fat. We can say the same thing – keep the same meaning – by deleting unnecessary words.
Like this: John works for Samsung.
Wasn’t that easy? Same taste. Less filling!
Now You Try
Download the worksheet here. There are practice sentences to try your editing skills along with answers and explanations. Here are a few hints to save words when you are editing:
- change nouns into adjectives
- avoid redundant words (two words that have a similar meaning)
- don’t repeat the same word in the same sentence
Good luck. Let me know how it goes!
Download the worksheet here.
it is good
the site is nice