It’s bound to happen sometime to any writer, whether professional or not, when he or she unwittingly strings up far too many words to form the subject of a sentence, and then doesn’t bother to check how excruciatingly tough to read the resulting sentence becomes.
Take a look and read—preferably aloud—the following lead sentence of
a very recent opinion column in a leading Metro Manila daily:
“The initial euphoria generated within the LGBT community by the preliminary document released in connection with the two-week synod of over 200 bishops from around the world to discuss issues facing 21st century Catholic families was short-lived.”
The subject of that sentence takes all of 35 words to unravel and to form a complete, discernible idea—“the initial euphoria generated within the LGBT community by the preliminary document released in connection with the two-week synod of over 200 bishops from around the world to discuss issues facing 21st century Catholic families”—but by then the reader is already too flustered by information overload to clearly fathom what the subject and the statement are all about.
This is because when the verb and predicate—“was” and “short-lived”—finally show up, the reader must mentally backtrack through a semantic maze of 32 words to logically connect those words to their true subject, the noun “euphoria.” By that time, however, the reader will have already lost considerable reading time and momentum and—even worse—possibly also the desire to read on.
Is there a way for writers to spare readers from this very unpleasant and frustrating experience?
Yes, there’s one very simple writing procedure to prevent it from happening—make the head noun* of a long-winded subject as close as possible to the operative verb. In the case of the sentence at issue here, that head noun is “euphoria,” the operative verb is “was,” and the subject complement is the adjective “short-lived.” The objective is to bring these three grammatical elements beside or close to one another or, if that’s not syntactically possible, at least within handshake distance, so to speak.
I think our best shot is to seize that sentence by its tail and whip both the operative verb “was” and the subject complement “short-lived” to the very front of the sentence, as follows:
“
A short-lived euphoria was generated within the LGBT community by the preliminary document released in connection with the two-week synod of over 200 bishops from around the world to discuss issues facing 21st century Catholic families.”
Take note that in this reconstruction, the clause formed by the first eight words of the sentence—“a short-lived euphoria was generated within the LGBT community”—already gives the reader a clear gist of the statement that’s unfolding. Indeed, the remaining 27 words of the sentence—“by the preliminary document released in connection with the two-week synod of over 200 bishops from around the world to discuss issues facing 21st century Catholic families”—have become simply supporting or clarifying details of the basic statement made by the basic clause.
Another simple way to clarify and streamline the original sentence is to use the expletive “it” to start the statement, as follows:
“
It was a short-lived euphoria that was generated within the LGBT community by the preliminary document released in connection with the two-week synod of over 200 bishops from around the world to discuss issues facing 21st century Catholic families.”
Still another but a little bit radical way is to make “the LGBT community” the subject of the sentence and the direct doer of the action, as follows:
“
The LGBT community experienced a short-lived euphoria over the preliminary document released in connection with the two-week synod of over 200 bishops from around the world to discuss issues facing 21st century Catholic families.”
Note that this version involves changing the passive verb form “was generated” to the active verb “experience,” a very neat but admittedly much more complex grammatical operation.
IMAGE CREDIT, LEFT: WWW.381DESIGN.COM IMAGE CREDIT, RIGHT: THE ROBERTS GROUP, WWW.BOOKMARKETING.MAG.COMThe point here is that to make the reading experience easier, more pleasant, and as effortless as possible for the reader, the writer should make every effort to position the head noun of a longwinded subject as close as possible to the operative verb. (October 25, 2014)
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*The head noun concept. In English grammar, a noun phrase is categorized as a
nominal group, which by definition consists of a noun and all the other words that modify or characterize that noun. Within a clause, a nominal group functions as though it is that noun itself, which is referred to as the
head or
head noun; the items that precede the head noun are called its
premodifiers, and the items that come after it are its
qualifiers. This being the case, in a noun phrase that functions as the subject of a sentence, the head noun is the subject in its unmodified form; as such, it determines whether the noun phrase is singular or plural. As a rule, any other noun or pronoun found in the premodifier or in the qualifier of the head noun doesn’t determine or affect its being singular or plural.
