Improving Sentence Clarity with Stronger Sentence Cores

In public policy communication, the strength of a sentence’s “core” can make all the difference in effectively conveying ideas and persuading readers. When sentences are said to have strong cores, it means that the sentence was structured so that its subject and verb are clear, easily recognizable, and located near each other, typically positioned at or near the beginning of the sentence. When we write with strong sentence cores, our sentences come out clearer and more concise, which makes it easier for our readers to understand our main points without confusion.

Instead of writing sentences with strong sentence cores, however, many public policy professionals choose abstract nouns as subjects that can come across as bewildering. If the subjects in your sentences are abstract instead of concrete, many readers will have trouble visualizing them, which will make it harder for them to comprehend what you’re trying to communicate. Take for example this sentence with an extremely weak core:

• The continuation of cash transfers to areas of the world experiencing food insecurity or famine is dependent on the reauthorization of the Emergency Food Security Program and the US Congress including stringent restrictions on the use of in-kind food donations.

The underlined portion of the sentence is the subject. See how bewildering an abstract concept can be? The bolded “is” is, of course, the verb. Because the writer used “is” for the verb and not something more dynamic, the action of the sentence had to go somewhere else. Where it went was into five nouns: continuation, transfers, reauthorization, restrictions, donations. We call these kinds of nouns nominalizations—nouns derived from verbs. Continuation comes from the verb to continue, transfers comes from to transfer, reauthorization from to reauthorize, restrictions from to restrict, and donations from to donate. 

In English, verbs can be divided into two major classes: static and dynamic. Any to be verb is chief among static verbs, which either express a state of being or link nouns and adjectives. Look out for am, are, is, was, and were. The static verbs also include appear, become, seem, prove, and remain, as well as verbs that define things in terms of the five senses: look, taste, smell, feel, and sound (as in “his speech sounded serious”).

Static verbs lack action. Dynamic verbs, on the other hand, grab you by the collar because they convey action through strong images the reader can picture. Many public policy professionals tend to rely on is and other static verbs and lose momentum by stumbling into the passive voice (more on that in a bit).

Although verbs like does, get, go, has, put are (technically) dynamic verbs, they add almost nothing to a sentence.

When a sentence like our example above has an abstract subject and a static verb, along with several nominalizations (where all the action went), the writer needs several prepositions (7 italicized below) to tie all the different parts of speech into a grammatically correct sentence:

• The continuation of cash transfers to areas of the world experiencing food insecurity or famine is dependent on the reauthorization of the Emergency Food Security Program and the U.S. Congress including stringent restrictions on the use of in-kind food donations.

Now, because all this unnecessary complexity is the result of a weak sentence core, all we need to strengthen it is to find a recognizable character to serve as the subject and some action to show in a verb. We’ll place the subject and the verb close together and at or near the beginning of the sentence. We could write, for example:

• The U.S. Congress could transfer cash and further restrict the use of in-kind food donations to areas of the world experiencing food insecurity or famine when it reauthorizes the Emergency Food Security Program.

There are four things you should take note of in this revision. First, it’s much easier to process because the subject of the sentence is a character the reader can picture, the verbs (transfer and restrict) are more dynamic and easier to picture than “is.” Second, we didn’t need to get rid of all the nominalizations. Some of them were quite helpful (more on that below). Third, our revision is a little more concise (33 words versus 40). That’s mostly because we were able to delete some of the prepositions stringing the nominalizations together. And fourth, we didn’t lose any of the information we needed to convey. We didn’t “dumb it down” by ridding it of complexity. Instead, we made sense of the complexity and presented it clearly and concisely.

It’s important to note that nominalizations are not always bad. Writers rely on nouns to name things, after all. For example, when you describe something as an “agreement,” you are using a nominalization: agreement is nominalized from the verb to agree. There is nothing unclear about agreement when you use it to name a thing, such as a contract. Furthermore, in following the old-to-new strategy of sequencing information, you can use a nominalization as the subject of a sentence that refers to a previous sentence:

• These arguments all depend on an incomplete data set.
• This decision could result in an unnecessary burden on recipients.

In addition, you can use a nominalization to refer to an often-repeated concept. In the following sentences, the nominalizations name concepts that we refer to repeatedly. Rather than spell out a familiar concept in a full clause each time we mention it, we contract it into a noun. In these cases, the abstractions often become virtual actors:

• The Equal Rights Amendment featured prominently in last week’s presidential debate.

For added clarity, place the subject and the verb close to one another and close to the beginning of the sentence. “Nothing more frustrates understanding,” writes Richard Lauchman in Plain Style, than “verbs that are ‘politely late’ to the party. Always organize sentences so that the verb appears as close as possible to the subject.” This guidance is based on the limitations of short-term memory, which we rely on when reading. If you write a sentence in which the subject is far from the verb or the verb far from the object, it may be harder for the reader to follow. By the time readers reach the verb, they may have forgotten the subject, and by the time they reach the object, they may have forgotten the verb. Readers may have to reread a sentence when more than seven words come between the subject and the verb. In the following examples, the subject is underlined, and the verb is bolded.

• Sentence 1: Enrollment in the program, increasing from 120,480 veterans in 1994 to 240,487 in 1998, doubled.
• Sentence 2: From 1994 to 1998, veteran enrollment in the program doubled, increasing from 120,480 to 240,487.

Why is Sentence 1 more difficult to understand than Sentence 2? The answer is simple: structure. In Sentence 1, the subject (Enrollment in the program) is followed by a ten-word phrase before we come to the verb (doubled). As readers, we’re held in a state of uncertainty about what the subject is doing or what the sentence is about until we get to the verb. In awaiting the arrival of the verb, the reader can’t recognize what’s significant about the intervening words. In Sentence 2, because the subject and verb are close together (veteran employment in the program doubled), the reader can quickly process the content.

Bonus Tip: Use the Active Voice

You can make your writing clearer and more direct if you use the active voice and avoid using the passive voice. If it’s been a while since you thought about passive voice, here’s a quick reminder: The subject of a sentence written in the active voice is the doer of the action (the actor). The subject of a sentence written in the passive voice is acted upon by the object of the sentence. For example:

• Active voice: The legislator criticized the agency’s position.
• Passive voice: The agency’s position was criticized by the legislator.

Passive voice has a bad reputation—and for good reason. Writing in the passive voice can make writers (1) use subjects that are not characters or (2) omit important characters altogether. “Often, in a sentence constructed in the passive voice,” writes Benjamin Dreyer, Random House’s former copy chief, “the actor is omitted entirely. Sometimes this is done to call attention to a problem without laying blame (‘The refrigerator door was left open’) and sometimes, in weasel-like fashion, to avoid taking responsibility: ‘Mistakes were made,’ for instance, which, uttered on various occasions by various Bushes, may well be the motto of that political dynasty.”

It’s important to remember, however, that there are times in which sentences written in passive voice create a clearer sentence than one written in the active voice. For example, passive voice can allow you to use a subject that is an actor when using the active voice would force you to use a subject that is not an actor. Here are four other situations in which passive voice is appropriate:

By consistently writing with strong sentence cores and prioritizing clarity, directness, and conciseness, public policy professionals can much more effectively communicate their ideas, engage stakeholders, and mobilize support for lasting change in the world.