Author Topic: How do we improve logical thinking in sentence construction?  (Read 4428 times)

Joe Carillo

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Question sent in by e-mail by forces20, Forum member (June 28, 2011):

Good morning Sir!

Help me improve the following sentences:

1.“The top of  a cylinder on the surface of which a number of strips one sixteenth of an inch thick and one inch above the surface called knives are placed.”

2. “The author here makes digression that devilfish actually exist and have been known to devour men to make the story more real.”

3. “In a village on the Winconsin River just above the point where it joins the Mississipi on a cold February afternoon I first saw the light of a day.”

Do you have good advice for me/us for honing our logical reasoning skill so we can construct sentences effectively and coherently?

My reply to forces20:

I get a feeling that those three sentences were written by a nonnative English speaker who knows very little about English grammar, sentence structure, and organization. I’m afraid that he or she needs to go back to remedial grammar school for intensive instruction on how to construct coherent and understandable statements.

So, simply as a parlor exercise to help English-language learners limber up on sentence construction, I’m offering the following rewrites that attempt to fathom the intended message of those very badly constructed sentences:

1. “Placed on the top of the cylinder, one inch above the surface, are a number of so-called ‘knives,’ which are strips one-sixteenth of an inch thick.”

2. “To make the story more real, the author makes a digression here that devilfish actually exist and have been known to devour men.”

3. “In a village on the Winconsin River, just above the point where it joins the Mississippi, I first saw the light of day on a cold February afternoon.”

or, for heightened literary effect, this fully inverted-sentence version:

3a. “On a cold February afternoon, in a village on the Winconsin River just above the point where it joins the Mississippi, I first saw the light of day.”

How do we hone the logical reasoning skill to construct effective and coherent sentences in English? The answer is easier said than done: Know the English language well enough and learn to think in English, not just depend on word-for-word translations of your native-language thoughts into English.