CHAPTER 9 Style and Clarity^195
- Your father holds the opinion that you shouldn’t drive unless your grades
improve. (Note: Find a different word for opinion.) - I’ll help you clean up when you reach the end of the project.
Written Practice 9-5
Read the following paragraph. Rewrite any sentences that seem cumbersome.
Change passive verbs to active verbs, reveal hidden subjects and hidden verbs, and
place important information last in sentences.
This advancement in science is hard to believe unless you see it in action. Thanks
to the new Brain Computer Interface, people who are completely paralyzed due to
illness or trauma will get help in the future. By connecting patients’ brains to a
computer, scientists can help these patients make a communication with others and
even use their paralyzed limbs. Scientists have done an experiment with several
people. It can be done but teaching a patient to move a cursor with his or her mind
is neither fast nor fl uid.
Avoiding Unclear Pronoun References
Unclear pronoun reference leads directly to lost clarity. Every pronoun needs an
antecedent, which is a noun or noun phrase it can point to. For example: