University of El SalvadorWestern Multidisciplinary Campus

Foreign Language DepartmentEnglish Composition I

Handout 4Responsible: Professor Darlene Mata

Unit 1 – topic 4: Overloaded, Padded and Empty Sentences

Overloaded Sentences

Avoid sentences that contain more information than the reader can easily follow. Instead, divide such sentences into more manageable pieces that can be easily grasped.

Weak- Because researchers interested in speech synthesis and automatic recognition need to find rules that improve intelligibility of speech, they need to study the psychological determinants more closely before they can solve what has become a complex set of questions.

Improved- Researchers interested in speech synthesis and automatic recognition need to find rules that improve intelligibility of speech. Consequently, they need to study the psychological determinants more closely before they can solve what has become a complex set of questions.

Weak- In response to the leak history of the pipe made of 304-L stainless steel, a work request, IJ-117, was prepared by Plant Maintenance in August of 1989 to replace approximately 55 feet of the HLD 304-L pipe--the entire segment running from the "cells" area to the point in the drainage system that turns south to exit the building--with pipe made of a different material, Iconel 600 (see Figure…).

Improved- Plant Maintenance responded to the leak history of the stainless steel pipe (304-L) with a work request in August 1989 to replace a 55-foot section with Iconel 600 pipe. This section made up the entire pipe segment running from the "cells" area to a point where the drainage system turns south to exit the building (see Figure N).

Length is often blamed for sentences going awry, but the problem is more complex than that because a long sentence sometimes works. Take Mark Twain’s beautiful example:

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‘At times he may indulge himself with a long one [sentence], but he will make sure there are no folds in it, no vaguenesses, no parenthetical interruptions of its view as a whole; when he has done with it, it won’t be a sea-serpent with half of its arches under the water; it will be a torch-light procession. (57 words)

Long sentences can become confusing when we put too much information in brackets, overuse ‘which’ clauses or make our subjects too wordy.

Overloading sentences with information in brackets

We sometimes try to make our sentences convey too much information by embedding extra information in brackets. Take this sentence from a Westpac credit card brochure about international travel insurance.

‘A cardholder becomes eligible for this Overseas travel insurance when, before leaving Australia on an overseas journey, they have a return overseas travel ticket, and A$500 of each of their prepaid travel costs (i.e. cost of their return overseas travel ticket, and/or airport/departure taxes; and/or their prepaid overseas accommodation/travel; and/or their other prepaid overseas itinerary items) have been charged to the cardholder’s eligible credit card account.’ (71 words)

I think it means that you have to have a return ticket before you leave the country and pre-pay at least $500 of your overseas travel expenses, including your ticket, with your credit card.

If you take out the information in brackets, the sentence is a bit easier. ‘A cardholder becomes eligible for this Overseas travel insurance when, before leaving Australia on an overseas journey, they have a return overseas travel ticket, and A$500 of each of their prepaid travel costs have been charged to the cardholder’s eligible credit card account.’

Although clearer this sentence still needs rewriting because the word ‘each’ is confusing, given that the items in brackets are followed by ‘and/or’. Also it raises questions: for example, if I pay for my

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accommodation with cash or another credit card, am I still eligible for insurance?

The information in brackets could have been an additional sentence using bullet points.

Overseas travel expenses include the costs of:• Return ticket and airport departure taxes• Prepaid overseas accommodation, travel and itinerary items

Trying to tweak this sentence still doesn’t work because the thinking behind it isn’t clear. Sometimes you just have to start again and work out what you are trying to say.

Overloading them with too much information in ‘which’ clauses

Take this example that I found in the Australian Financial Review during the GFC.

‘For example, the conversion of former US investment banking giants Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into commercial banks (which have tougher capital requirements) had the unintended consequence of squeezing funding to hedge funds – which in turn has exacerbated their dumping of assets across world markets.’ (45 words)

I have highlighted ‘which’ as causing the sentence overload, but it has an additional problem. I am not sure who ‘their’ relates to (unclear antecedent) – who’s doing the dumping?

Overloading the subject with too many wordsSentences that have a lengthy subject (nominal group or noun phrase) are difficult to read. 

[The young male rats that were from the same colony as the rats with symptoms of the disease, but which do not show sign of the disease at this stage of their development] were used as the control group.

Rewritten to make the subject shorter:

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[The symptom-free young male rats] were used as the control group. These rats were from the same colony as the rats showing symptoms of the disease.

What other causes of overloaded sentences have you noticed?

Writing is less about putting words on a page or screen than it is about putting thoughts in order.

Our job as writers is to clarify the world and ideas for our audience. That means illuminating—showing something that was hidden before—and simplifying—sorting out ideas, phenomena and events that are tangled and difficult to understand.

Consider these tangled ideas. By the way, I invented none of the examples I’m about to show you. They’re all taken from published documents or from former students. In either case, the writers should never have let anyone else see them.

We were informed of your government’s new initiative to link young people about to graduate from post-secondary education with small businesses who need skilled employment candidates by a teacher from Saskatchewan who is a member of our team of educators that is championing the inclusion of health literacy into high-school curricula.

How many ideas are crammed into that one sentence? Yes, it’s grammatically correct, but it has 5 dependent clauses, 9 prepositional phrases and 51 words. No, I’m not going to give an eighth-grade lesson in grammar or parsing sentences. I’m saying that’s too much for any audience. There are at least 14 different, if linked ideas in it.

You have learned a sentence is a single complete thought. While it makes sense to link thoughts together, when you get a chain long enough to wrap around your winter tires, it’s too long.

How about this one: As he suggests, “the binary logic” of many sociological texts

encourages an Eurocentric analysis that conceptually constructs

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an a historical, apolitical social science which avoids an analysis of the political and economic exploitation that is associated with racial and ethnic prejudice and discrimination.

That one starts with “binary logic,” goes through sociology, history, politics and social science, some other ideas and ends up with discrimination. It’s like wandering in a college campus and wondering how you got to the garbage room when you started in the computer lab and were hoping to get to the caf.

I call these “overloaded sentences”—they just cannot support that much information. By the time the readers get to the end of a sentence like that, they’ve forgotten the beginning.

Here’s one from fiction: Had he known that Ralph had managed to break into the

apartment and wire it quickly before he had followed the three of them to the video store, Andy might have given a small bit of thought to the intelligence of listing a good many words that clearly indicated his belief that his pursuers were idiots, but he didn’t, much to the displeasure of his unseen audience. 

Organizational problemSentence overload is caused when you have so much to say and you try to get it all out at once. The solution: get a GRIP on your sentences as well as your whole document:

Goal: what are you trying to accomplish with these thoughts? What do you want your readers to do after reading? 

Reader: whom are you saying it to? What do they already know, what do you want them to know?

Idea: of all the ideas in that long, convoluted sentence, which is the most important?

Plan: what other information does the audience need to understand your main point? How is this other information related to the main point?

Now, organize it. Put the most important idea first. If two ideas are equally important, make each one the main part of a separate sentence.

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Then use less important ideas as dependent clauses or qualifying phrases.

You don’t always have to repeat qualifying information: Notably, policymakers in India have made financial inclusion a

priority, according to speaker LD Patel, Deputy director of the XXX of India, where all Indian institutions have been requested by the central regulatory department of India to formulate board approved educational inclusion plans for the next three years.

The Indian government has asked all Indian institutions to develop plans to bring education to the poorest communities within three years, said LD Patel, Deputy Director of the XXX.

Sometimes, it seems as if the writer changed his or her mind halfway through the sentence:

It highlights the growing importance and recognition of healthy nutrition continues to gain in Canada and internationally with the availability of more resources, information and good practices to help develop strategic priorities, research, evaluation and programs.

The importance of healthy nutrition is gaining recognition internationally. There are more resources, information and good practices available to help develop strategic priorities, research, evaluation and programs.

Based on last year’s results, and since the target audience is very well-defined and the product was developed for, and extensively tested with that audience, we expect the following results in 2010/11:

The product was developed for a specific audience and tested with it. Based on those results, we can expect the following in 2010-2011:From fiction:

Tristan blinked, his head moving up, not realizing he was so tired, normally he was more than energized and almost always ready to

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go.

This actually combines several problems common in fiction from new writers: more detail than the reader needs or wants, and telling instead of showing. I would amend it to:

Tristan’s head nodded involuntarily. “What’s up, Tristan?” Annabella asked. “You’re usually ready to go.”

Challenges:

Here is a couple that I received from students. My challenge to you is to turn these into readable prose. Leave your responses in the Comments box, below.

Have fun!

1: Management is pleased to be receiving a positive response from employees about the relocation of headquarters from Toronto to Calgary, although there are some concerns about the merger due to the cultural differences between the Calgary employees versus those from Toronto, so in response to growing concerns, management is taking action in order to ensure co-operation and compatibility between teams.

2. I recently completed a kitchen remodel and on July 2 I ordered by telephone double-glazed, oak French doors from Quality Doors, Inc, that were required for this job, which when they arrived on July 25, my carpenter told me were cut too small, measuring total of 2.31 square metres wide instead of 2.33 square metres wide, so my carpenter offered rebuild the opening but charging me for his time $455.50 because I waited three weeks for these doors, and my clients wanted them installed immediately.

Improving Empty and Padded Sentences

A paragraph should not include sentences that do not say anything worth saying. These sentences are sometimes called empty sentences. The first sentence in this pair is empty; the second is not:

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Cairo, Egypt, is a large city because it is so vast.

Cairo, Egypt, is a city of about eight million people.

Nor should a paragraph include sentences that use unnecessary words. These sentences are sometimes called padded sentences. The first sentence in this pair is padded; the second is not:

It is, of course, a fact that Cairo is located on the River Nile.

Cairo is located on the River Nile.

Empty & Padded Sentences Exercise

Revise each padded sentence. Cut unnecessary words and phrases.

1. School was closed due to the fact that there was a snowstorm.

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2. Last summer, I had the good luck to go during the summer to a mountain camp in the mountains of New York State.

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3. What I wanted to say was that the baseball game in being broadcast right now on channel 24 as a matter of fact.

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Revise each empty sentence. Remove the empty sentence.

1. The principal’s speech couldn’t be heard by those of us in the back row. We were unable to hear what she was saying. Later, I learned the topic was “Goals for our Music Program.”

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2. About 55 percent of all the voters voted against the corporation’s management. That’s more than half of all voters. It just goes to show you how foolish people can be.

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What happens when we overload sentences?

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