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Day 208: Move prepositional phrases describing the main verb to an introductory position.
Prepositional phrases cause many problems with conciseness and clarity. In some cases, as discussed by this tip, they can lead the reader to unexpected understanding when they are in the wrong place. Consider this sentence:
“I will buy the shirt with my credit card.”The prepositional phrase is “with my credit card,” and it seems to describe the shirt. Based on this sentence, I’m looking at several shirts. One shirt has my credit card in it, so I decide to buy it. That’s strange. Why is my credit card in the shirt?
The problem is that descriptive phrases generally appear to describe the thing to which they are closest. In this sentence, the closest thing is the shirt. However, in this sentence, we want to use the prepositional phrase as an adverbial phrase describing “buy,” not as an adjectival phrase describing “shirt.” To clarify our meaning, we move the prepositional phrase closer to “buy.”
We can move it to the position following buy, which gives us this clear but awkward sentence:
“I will buy with my credit card the shirt.”Another place close to the verb, rather than after the verb, is before it. Using this tip, we’ll move that prepositional phrase to the beginning of the sentence and make it an introductory adverbial phrase. Now, we have this clear sentence.
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