Clarity: Part 1

The four topics I chose to read about are balance parallel ideas, repair misplaced and dangling modifiers, emphasize key ideas, and tighten wordy sentences . I am going to write about what I learned about each topic and how I can apply them to improve my own writing. All of these topics will definitely improve the clarity of my writing. 

• Balance parallel ideas- It is important to use parallel grammatical form to make sentences flow better and not sound awkward to the reader. This can be done by balancing single words with words, phrases with phrases, and clauses with clauses. In order to create balanced structures adding words and proper conjunctions is important. My sentences tend to sound awkward sometimes and implementing parallelism in my writing will help

• Repair misplaced and dangling modifiers- The most important thing I learned in this section is to place modifiers before the word they modify. This makes the modifier clear about what subject it is describing, and there is no confusion by the readers. This also helps sentences flow and sound less awkward. When sentences get long and lengthy it is important to make sure the order of subjects and modifiers is coherent.

• Emphasize key ideas- When discussing two ideas equally in a sentence you should use coordination. When expressing that two ideas with a different emphasis, place the main idea in the independent clause and the minor idea in the subordinate clause. It is important to not create run on sentences when doing this, but you also don't want every sentence to sound choppy. It is important to find a good balance of sentence structures that all succeed at conveying the important ideas. 

• Tighten wordy sentences- This is the one aspect of writing I struggle with the most because I always use too many words to write what I want to say. Some tips I learned to improve this are eliminate redundancies/ repetitions, shorten phrases, and simplify sentence structure. 

Chapnick, Samantha. "Boy-Butterfly-magnigying-glass". October 6, 2009 via flickr.  Creative Commons. 

Reflection:

I learned that short and concise sentences don't just break up sentence structures and sound better, but it also adds to the visual appeal of the QRG. One of Jenny's introductory paragraphs is a great example of this.

• "Similar to many other popular issues, Common Core involves a wide variety of people. Politicians, educators, government officials, parents and students--what do they have in common? The Core."

A great way to balance parallel ideas is to use phrases that have the same number of words in them. This effortlessly connects ideas together in a way that sounds natural. Jenny did a great job of this in her QRG.

• "Over-exaggeration, name-calling and strong statements are at a peak, perhaps due to the upcoming primary elections and presidential debates."

Lastly, Annelise used a great format to emphasize key ideas that was different than discussed in the book. She used bullet points to point out the important facts to both sides of the argument. This was effective because it was clear, organized, and broke up the monotony of the paragraphs (Bullet points do not show in example).

• SIDE 1
• Women in the industry that have been mistreated or want to see more gender diversity
• Women activists
• Women entrepreneurs