Key Takeaways — Chapter 6: Sentences That Work
The summary card. If you remember nothing else, remember this page — and the list of 20.
The one idea
Most sentence problems in technical writing are not bloat (Chapter 3's territory) — they're breakage: grammatical ambiguity that makes the reader stop and re-read. A sentence can be tight, vivid, and jargon-free and still dangle a modifier, splice two clauses, or orphan a pronoun. Correctness is a separate skill from clarity, and you catch breakage by diagnosis — name the error family, apply its fix — not by feel.
The six error families (hunt one at a time)
| Family | The tell | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Modifiers | Opening phrase + wrong actor after the comma | Put the doer right after the comma, or rewrite the phrase |
| Pronoun reference | Bare this; it/they with two possible nouns | Give every this a noun; repeat the noun when ambiguous |
| Comma splices / run-ons | Two complete sentences joined by a comma or nothing | Period, semicolon, comma+FANBOYS, subordination, or semicolon+adverb |
| Subject–verb agreement | Verb agrees with the nearest noun, not the subject | Strip the middle phrase; check the skeleton |
| Parallelism | A series/list whose items have different shapes | Make every item the same grammatical form |
| Mechanics bloat | There is/are…that; due to the fact that; in order to | Promote the real subject; one-word connectors |
The five fixes for a comma splice (they're not interchangeable)
For "The cache expired, latency rose":
- Period — two beats, each emphasized. "…expired. Latency rose."
- Semicolon — linked, relationship implied. "…expired; latency rose."
- Comma + FANBOYS — names the relationship. "…expired, so latency rose."
- Subordination — encodes cause/condition (often best). "When the cache expired, latency rose."
- Semicolon + conjunctive adverb — formal, explicit. "…expired; consequently, latency rose."
The deep lesson: a comma splice is often a sign you haven't decided how two ideas relate. Picking a fix forces the decision — which sharpens the logic, not just the grammar. (The orphan this works the same way: naming the noun forces you to identify the thought.)
Two diagnostics worth memorizing
- For agreement: strip every phrase between subject and verb. "The list of vendors who passed the audit (is/are)…" → "The list … is."
- For modifiers: after every introductory comma, the next word must name whoever does the opening action. If it doesn't, the modifier dangles.
Correctness isn't enough: vary your sentences
- All-long drowns the reader in suspended clauses; the point arrives too late.
- All-short flattens cause and effect to equal weight and reads like a metronome.
- The fix for both: match length and structure to the weight of the idea. Short sentences land points and create emphasis by contrast; longer sentences carry relationships and sequences. Read it aloud — your voice tells you which failure you have.
The themes, stated plainly
- Clarity is not the enemy of precision — and neither is correctness its enemy. A dangling modifier doesn't just look sloppy; it can claim something false (the centrifuge prepared the samples). In technical writing, where misreads cause real harm, sentence correctness is precision.
- Every sentence must earn its place — at the mechanics level too. There are…that, due to the fact that, and redundant pairs add weight no single reader notices but every reader feels.
- The best writing is invisible — varied, correct sentences never trip the reader, so the reader notices the content, not the prose.
Carry these into the next chapters
- Correct sentences still need the right words → Chapter 7: Word Choice, Tone, and Voice.
- Correct sentences must also connect into flowing paragraphs → Chapter 8: Paragraphs That Flow.
- Error-hunting is one stage of a full revision workflow → Chapter 12: Editing and Revision.
The one-line test for any stumble: Name the error family — modifier? pronoun? boundary? agreement? parallelism? bloat? A fix you can name is a fix that transfers. A fix by feel doesn't.