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Can’t think of a core sentence? Okay, here are a few:

Why do airlines show such mediocre films?

Madison Bumgarner and friends brought a flag to San Francisco.

Every senator is a millionaire.

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CUT EXTRA WORDS TO ACHIEVE GREATER DIRECTNESS

If you can reduce verbiage, your prose will communicate more directly and effectively. In cutting the fat, you need to consider both the diction and the syntax. When it comes to diction, the way to eliminate superfluous words is deceptively simple: ask yourself if you need all of the words you’ve included to say what you want to say. Such revision requires an aggressive attitude. Expect to find unnecessary restatements or intensifiers such as “quite” and “very” that add words but not significance.

Sometimes, by the way, the problem is not just a matter of syntax but a matter of confidence. A lot of writing becomes obscure because the writer is trying to hide what he or she has to say with various “throat clearings” and other defensive verbiage. If you don’t say anything clearly enough to be understood, you can’t be accused of being wrong. If you find yourself bogged down in language, take a moment to write as directly as possible an answer to the question, “What I’m really trying to say here is …”

BEGINNING WITH “IT IS” OR “THERE IS”: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Sentences that begin with “It is” or “There is” are known as expletive constructions. The term expletive comes from a Latin word that means “serving to fill out.” Most of the time, you can streamline your prose by getting rid of expletive constructions. Consider how the expletives function in the following examples:

There are several prototypes for the artificial heart.

It is obvious that the American West exerted a profound influence on the photography of Ansel Adams.

Compare these with versions that simply eliminate the expletives.

The artificial heart has several prototypes.

The American West exerted a profound influence on the photography of Ansel Adams.

The “It is obvious that” opening, for example, causes the grammar of the sentence to subordinate its real emphasis.

In some cases, though, an expletive can provide useful emphasis, as in the following example: “There are three primary reasons that you should avoid litigation.” Although this sentence grammatically subordinates its primary content (avoiding litigation), the expletive provides a useful frame for what is to follow.

In an excellent book entitled Rhetorical Grammar (Longman, 2009), Martha Kolln and Loretta Gray make the case for using what they term “the there-transformation” as a strategy for adding emphasis. They do so by focusing on what they call “the rhythm pattern” of the sentence. Compare “There’s a stranger standing on the porch,” where the accent falls on “stranger,” with the end focus of “The stranger stands on the porch.” Here are two more examples of their advice on using rhythm patterns to provide emphasis, which we offer in part to demonstrate how easily you can begin attuning yourself to shapes:

End focus: a common rhythm pattern in which, if you read aloud, you can hear the stress near the end, in the last or next to last unit of information. Kolln offers as examples “Barbara wrecked her motorcycle yesterday” and “My book for chemistry class cost almost 60 dollars.” Note how the pressure falls on the “yes” in yesterday and the “six” in sixty and “dol” in dollars.

Interrupting the rhythm pattern: a sentence marked by an inserted interrupter—Kolln offers “Other ways, in fact, are much more common.” Here, the interrupter attracts emphasis by standing out.

STATIC VERSUS ACTIVE VERBS: “TO BE” OR “NOT TO BE”

Verbs energize a sentence. They do the work, connecting the parts of the sentence with each other. In a sentence of the subject–verb–direct object pattern, the verb— known as a transitive verb—functions as a kind of engine, driving the subject into the predicate, as in the following examples.

John F. Kennedy effectively manipulated his image in the media.