Improving Stringy Sentences

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Improving Stringy Sentences
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What is a stringy sentence?

• A sentence that goes on for too long without
  showing that the ideas in the sentence are
  related.

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Notice how the ideas in the following draft are
simply strung together using the conjunction and.

• Revision
• Most travel writers write about beautiful
  places so that reader can imagine visiting those
  places. Mark Hertsgaard wrote about places that
  people had damaged. He described them in his book
  Earth Odyssey because he wants readers to know
  how humans are injuring the planet.

• Stringy Sentence
• Most travel writers write about beautiful
  places and readers can imagine visiting those
  places, and Mark Hertsgaard wrote about places
  that people had damaged, and he described them in
  his book Earth Odyssey, and he wants readers to
  know how humans are injuring the planet.

The first two ideas and the last two ideas are
combined. The third idea stands alone.
Transitions show the relationship between
combined ideas.
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Revising Stringy Sentences

• 1. First, separate the sentence into a list of
  the ideas it contains.
• 2. Next, identify the relationships between the
  ideas.
• Are they connected by a cause-and-effect
• relationship?
• Are they in chronological order?

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Revising Stringy Sentences Cont.

• 3. Decide which ideas should be combined and
  which should stand alone.
• 4. Choose the transition words you will use to
  show the relationship between ideas. Common
  transitions include the following
• if, then, so, when first, although,
• finally, however, and because.
• 5. Rewrite the stringy sentences as two or more
  shorter sentences.

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Try It!

• Seventeen is the worlds most popular
  magazine for todays teenage girls and has the
  latest scoop on style, friends, guys, colleges,
  relationships and if a teen girl orders the
  monthly subscription she can get exciting
  features including fiction, quizzes, music, video
  trends and more.

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• Seventeen is the worlds most popular
  magazine for todays teenage girls because it has
  the latest scoop on style, friends, guys,
  colleges, and relationships. If a teen girl
  orders the monthly subscription she can also get
  exciting features including fiction, quizzes,
  music, video trends and more.