Verbs and Hassle-Free Sentences

How often do you type a sentence, find it unclear, and then get a headache untangling your ideas? One effective detangling method is to identify your verbs and plant them right after their subjects.

Take a look at this sentence and ask yourself how it could be clearer:

Another problem for e-books that are not simultaneously published in print is that they pose a marketing challenge.

There are three subject-verb pairs in that sentence: “problem … is,” “e-books … are,” and “e-books [they] pose.”

For all three actions, it becomes easy to convey the central ideas more clearly by putting each subject right before its verb:

Another problem is that some e-books pose a marketing challenge: they are not simultaneously published in print.

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two lessons to help you master the parts of speech and parts of a sentence.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!