第145页 | 300 Days of Better Writing | 阅读 ‧ 电子书库

Day 148: Keep the description of an action close to the action.

Readers tend to link descriptive words and phrases to the closest preceding thing or action. If the action words and their descriptions are not together, the reader may misinterpret the sentence. For example, consider this sentence.

“The alligator swam past the man walking quickly.”

Who was moving quickly? The alligator swimming or the man walking? While either interpretation is possible, this sentence seems to imply that the man is the quick one. If that is the intention, the sentence is fine. However, if the alligator is the quick one, then the sentence should read,

“The alligator swam quickly past the man walking.”

Here’s another example:

“The alligator ate the small dog while we were fishing with violent twists and turns.”

This sentence implies that we were violently twisting and turning as we were fishing. This is a hard way to catch fish. Instead, the sentence could read as follows:

“The alligator ate the small dog with violent twists and turns while we were fishing.”

This is much better. By placing the description closer to the action, the reader is more likely to interpret the sentence correctly.

However, it could still be misinterpreted. Maybe the dog was twisting and turning. This is an unlikely interpretation, but it is possible. Our recommendation is this:

“With violent twists and turns, the alligator ate the small dog while we were fishing.”

Now only one interpretation is possible because the closest word that can be described by these words is “ate.”