I found
this sentence from Philip Roth’s A Plot against America, which is 142 words
long:
“Elizabeth, New Jersey, when my
mother was being raised there in a flat over her father’s grocery store, was an
industrial port a quarter the size of Newark, dominated by the Irish working
class and their politicians and the tightly knit parish life that revolved
around the town’s many churches, and though I never heard her complain of
having been pointedly ill-treated in Elizabeth as a girl, it was not until she
married and moved to Newark’s new Jewish neighborhood that she discovered the
confidence that led her to become first a PTA “grade mother,” then a PTA vice
president in charge of establishing a Kindergarten Mothers’ Club, and finally
the PTA president, who, after attending a conference in Trenton on infantile
paralysis, proposed an annual March of Dimes dance on January 30 – President
Roosevelt’s birthday – that was accepted by most schools.”
When using the Paramedic Method the
sentence can be condensed to:
After my mom married and moved from
Elizabeth, New Jersey to Newark, she gained confidence to be part of the PTA
and proposed an annual March of Dimes dance that was accepted by most schools.
By using the Paramedic Method, you
still provide the necessary information but in a shorter, clearer sentence.
I actually read the first sentence aloud and almost passed out. The revised Paramedic Method sentence is much easier to read. I hope that doing this blog post and condensing long sentences will help me in my writing. I tend to have some long sentences and now that we are learning about the Paramedic Method, I hope I can use it efficiently. I do not know a lot about what is good and what is not good, but it seems to me that you did a good job. So, Good Job!
ReplyDeleteThat is a great example of a sentence that needs to be cut down. By the time you are halfway through reading it you want to give up and not go any further. Not sure how you found that one, but a perfect example for this blog assignment. When I read your trimmed down version I know everything the author was trying to say without all the non-essential clutter.
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