Try giving your reader some relief with a five-
or ten-word sentence. Like the fragment, it attracts attention. So, use
it to open an argument. One of the strongest positions for the short sentence
is at the beginning of a paragraph.
Documentary films
are a worry. First of all, there's the term "documentary"
itself, which was thought clumsy by the very man who invented it,
John Grierson.
This short, provocative sentence prompts
the reader to ask, Why?
It is quite an achievement. Though Boris
Yeltsin is erratic in temperament and unsound in body, and though
he had presided over a period of change in which most Russians have
grown poorer, they have re-elected him.
Greenpeace used no half-measures. Claiming
that old growth forests and many species of wild life were being
wiped out, it called for all clear-cutting to stop, and no more
new forest roads.
But others aren't so sure. "We have
yet to find evidence that the introduction of new technology in
schools raises test scores," says the Abell Foundation's Kate
Walsh. Even some advocates, like consultant Margaret Riel, concede
that test scores don't prove the case for computer networking.
