ClearTips: Powerful paragraphs

Lead with the point and list disparate details

Sometimes you can leave out such supporting conjunctions as also and and to add an edgy cadence to your details. Without conjunctions the series hits the reader in quick bursts, making each detail stand out. It also gives the impression that the list is not exhaustive.

Sierra Leone's post-dictatorship problems are almost absurd in their breadth. It once exported rice; now it can't feed itself. The life span of the average citizen is 39, the shortest in Africa. Unemployment stands at 87 percent and tuberculosis is spreading out of control. Corruption, brazen and ubiquitous, is a cancer on the economy.

Here the writer even leaves out the conjunction between the clauses of the first supporting sentence, joining them instead with a semicolon: It once exported rice; now it can't feed itself. Notice, too, how a consistent verb, is, binds the sentences of the paragraph.

Below, short sentences are even more staccato:

After a French winter of discontent, comes a hint of spring. The economy is starting to pick up. The seemingly inexorable rise in unemployment is slowing. Taxes, having reached a record high, are at last dropping. Interest rates are at their lowest level in 35 years. Trade is booming. Business morale is less flat. Even President Jacques Chirac and Alain Juppé, his Gaullist prime minister, are finally edging their way up from their previous abysmal depths in the opinion polls.

Supporting sentences made up of disparate details have different subjects. Since you are stripping the paragraph of its linking conjunctions, use all present-tense verbs or even the same verb to enhance cohesion. (For more on parallel structure, see "Stick to one subject," and "Stick to one verb form.") To try it, start with more than two details of equal weight. Short details work best. Pile them up. See what happens.

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