The Well-crafted Sentence

Abstract

There are a lot of people who know how to construct a sentence, but who, the moment they start to write an essay, get things wrong, producing work that is marred by mistakes or by sentences that do not quite make sense. Why do things go wrong? Why do sentences sometimes read awkwardly and not convey their meaning clearly? One answer to this second question is that the writer has not thought about what he or she wants to say. Indeed, some people argue that provided you think clearly about what you are doing — about the ideas you wish to convey, the information you wish to get across, the argument you wish to develop — then the writing will take care of itself. If you bear in mind the purpose and audience of your work, they suggest, it should be the case that your writing will have direction and coherence.