Trimming a sentence

Trim Every Sentence to Analyze its Core

​Consider this sentence: My chief concern with this budget, which has otherwise been well considered, are the drastic cuts in the school funds.

My chief concern with this budget, which has otherwise been well considered, are the drastic cuts in the school funds.

• Diagnosing and improving sentences requires mastering the skill of trimming, reducing the sentence to its core, then analyzing the core.

• This is based on a very important grammar rule: every sentence must "work" even when its prepositional phrases, interrupters, and other modifiers are eliminated.

​Step 1: Cross out all nonessential prepositional phrases.

• A preposition is any word that can complete a any sentence like these:

  • The squirrel ran ________ the tree. (up, to, around, from, in, by, etc.)

  • I went to the party ______ a brain surgeon. (as, with, for, etc.)

  • Democracy is government ______ the people. (for, of by, etc.)

Open Ended

Our sentence has two non-essential prepositional phrases which can be eliminated. What are they?

My chief concern with this budget, which has been otherwise well considered, are the drastic cuts in the school funds.

​Step 2: Cross out all interrupting modifiers.

• Interrupting modifiers are generally easy to spot because they come between commas or dashes.

• The sentence should always hold together even when the interrupting modifiers are removed.

Draw

Cross out the prepositional phrases and interrupters in our sentence:

My chief concern with this budget, which has otherwise been well considered, are the drastic cuts in the school funds.

​Step 3: Cross out any other nonessential modifiers

• Once you learn to identify partcipal phrases, appositives, and more mundane modifiers like adjectives and adverbs, you can trim them all from your sentences as well.

  • There is one exception: predicate adjectives.

    • Karen was tired.

    • We cannot remove "tired" because the sentence doesn't convey a complete idea.

Draw

Cross out all prepositional phrases, interrupters, and unessential modifiers in the sentence.

Hint: you should have only 5 words left in the sentence.

My concern are the cuts.

My chief concern are the cuts.

• The subject and verb disagree -- concern is a singular subject, but are is a plural verb. We could change the verb to is, but the sentence then has a number shift; the singular concern is equated with the plural cuts.

  • My chief concern is the cuts.

​Weak Verbs

• These problems point to an even deeper problem: the most essential part of the sentence, the verb, is very weak.

  • Forms of the verb be, like, is, are, was, and were are the weakest verbs in English.
    

Although the budget is otherwise well considered, I object to the drastic cuts in school funds.

Revised sentence

The sentence clearly indicated disapproval, so a more personal subject "I" and a strong verb like "object" would strengthen the sentence.

Strengthen & Clarify

Strengthen and clarify your verbs.