How do we know the best way to communicate with our readers? Because of research conducted in the last 20 or so years on how people read-- how they process text and what kind of writing is easiest for them to process. From this research, we have learned the following 3 principles that can make anyone a better writer:
1. Decide what the major action in the sentence is. Put it in the verb space.
Verbs are action words, right? So where else would the action be, but in the verb? Look at this real example:
"Compliance with the provision is mandatory."
The grammatical verb in this sentence is "is" - but that does not express the action that is being conveyed. The real action is hidden in the noun "compliance". Let's start rewriting this sentence by making "must comply" the new verb (we've changed the adjective "mandatory" into part of the verb"). That takes us to the next principle.
2. Decide who the doer of the action is (the agent). Put the agent in the subject space.
If the verb in our new sentence is "comply", who or what is doing the complying? We can't tell from the original sentence (and that's often the problem with writing that doesn't follow the 3 principles). However, if we know that this sentence came from a description of the tax code for employers, we can determine the intended doer from the context. So now we have a subject and a verb:
Subject Verb Object
Agent Action Goal
The employer must comply with the provision.
Clearer? We at least know who to hold responsible now!
For one short sentence, this may not seem to make much of a difference. But when you encounter sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, of poorly written prose, it certainly slows you down at the very least.
Of course, sometimes the agent of the action is obscured deliberately. There was a famous cartoon of one of our presidents (it doesn't really matter which one, unfortunately!) saying "Mistakes were made!" If you don't want to tell who is doing what to whom, that's between you and your conscience!
