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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