ClearTips: Stunning sentences

Inner parts

Many writers habitually open their subordinate clauses with which is, that is, who is. Taking out the pronoun and verb is a standard edit (in the spirit of Strunk and White's "which hunting") and is one of the easiest you can make to begin building sentences that are less ordinary.

The PC Forum, an annual conference that attracts some of the biggest names in the computer industry, is a hard place to get noticed, especially if you are a relatively obscure economist.

The highlighted phrase could have been a dependent clause, which is an annual conference. Removing the which is shortens the sentence and picks up the cadence by adding the elaboration abruptly.

Last year General Electric, an American conglomerate, earned $6.6 billion in after-tax profits by selling everything from fridges to aircraft engines.

Most writers unnecessarily introduce examples with such as, for example, that is, and the shorthand i.e. and e.g. Dropping those openings and replacing the surrounding commas with a pair of dashes provide variety—and pick up the cadence of your sentences.

Then along comes some external force—a volcano, an asteroid, an ice age—that changes all the niches and launches a mad scramble for survival.

An ounce of example is worth a ton of abstraction.

Impressionism's essential project—the capture of momentary effects of light—was too insubstantial to fully engage him.

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