In last week’s column we discussed the resumptive modifier. We saw that by using a key word in the main clause as the subject or theme of the relative phrases that come after it, we can eliminate verbal sprawl and construct more emphatic sentences. That repeating key word is the resumptive modifier, and it can take the form of a noun, verb, or adjective central to the idea of the main clause, as “woman” does in this sentence: “She was a
woman of a few thoughts, a
woman of a few words, a
woman with not a single bit of true feeling or informed opinion in her.”
Contrast that sentence with this one that’s overly laden with relative clauses: “She was a woman of a few thoughts who was capable of saying only a few words and who did not have a single bit of true feeling or informed opinion in her.”
The beauty in using resumptive modifiers is that they also make it so easy to add information to sentences. They allow the widest latitude possible for developing a chosen theme and going into new directions of thought within the same sentence—and all that without missing a beat or making readers gasping for air. We will see this superiority more clearly when we compare how two of the usual sentence-organizing techniques fare against resumptive modifiers in extracting sense from academic writing like this breathtakingly convoluted statement:
“According to a leading Filipino social scientist, the public has to have a clear appreciation of the factors that have brought about the primacy of celluloid popularity in gaining a foothold on Philippine voting preferences, of which the most outstanding characteristic is the profound tendency of Filipinos to identify very strongly with their favorite movie heroes, which in turn makes them embrace the latter’s make-believe ability to solve life’s problems in two hours or less as the real thing.”
That 79-word behemoth, as we can see, needs nothing less than major surgery. First, as a newspaper journalist might do it, we will boil that paragraph down into the bite-size sentences that go with the obligatory inverted-pyramid structure of most newspaper reporting:
“A Filipino social scientist has urged the public to clearly understand why celluloid popularity has gained such a strong foothold on Philippine voting preferences. He said that Filipinos have such a profound tendency to identify with their favorite movie heroes, which makes them actually think that the latter’s make-believe ability to solve life’s problems in two hours or less is for real.”
That reconstruction is clear and not really bad, if all we are after is bland objectivity. But now let’s put ourselves in the shoes of an opinion writer sold to the limitless utility of relative clauses:
“We must seriously ponder a leading Filipino social scientist’s admonition that the public should have a clearer appreciation of why celluloid popularity has gained such a strong foothold on Philippine voting preferences, a situation which, of course, stems from the fact that Filipinos identify very strongly with their favorite movie heroes, as a result of which they embrace make-believe ability to solve life’s problems in two hours or less as the real thing itself.”
Said with more conviction, of course, but the deadly sprawl of the relative clauses still makes the sentence teeter on the edges of incomprehension.
Now, for our third and last recourse, we’ll use resumptive modifiers to see if they can whip up the original sentence into better shape and give it more verve. Let’s use
“celluloid popularity” as the resumptive modifier to get rid of most of the relative pronouns in the sentence:
“We have to seriously ponder a leading Filipino social scientist’s admonition that the public should clearly understand why Filipinos are so strongly influenced by celluloid popularity in their voting preferences, a celluloid popularity that makes them identify so strongly with their movie heroes, a celluloid popularity that makes them embrace make-believe ability to solve life’s problems in two hours or less as the real thing itself.”
The ideas in the sentence have remained complex, of course, but they are much clearer and they flow much better than the original and the previous two rewrites. More than that, however, something amazing has happened to the sentence as a result of using resumptive modifiers. It now seems not only to have a greater ring and rhythm of truth to it but also the strong sense of conviction of someone who truly believes every word he says.
This, other than better organization and clarity and verve, is the magic that a good resumptive modifier brings to prose.
This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times
, subsequently became Chapter 61 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge
, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times
:The magic that resumptive modifiers can doNext week:
The usefulness of summative modifiers (December 5, 2024)
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