Day 209: Revise sentences to remove descriptive prepositional phrases.

Yesterday, we transformed the vague and confusing sentence “I will buy my shirt with my credit card” to the clear sentence “With my credit card, I’ll buy this shirt.” As we saw from yesterday’s tip, however, the end result can still sound awkward, regardless of its clarity. This brings us to part two: revise sentences to remove descriptive prepositional phrases. This strategy begins where yesterday’s left off.

“With my credit card, I’ll buy this shirt.”

The root sentence of the sample is “I’ll buy this shirt,” which has the main verb “buy.” We’ll revise the root sentence to incorporate the descriptive phrase “with my credit card.” One option is as follows.

“I’ll use my credit card to buy this shirt.”

What have we done? First, we moved the descriptive prepositional phrase to an introductory sentence. This helped us identify the root sentence. Second, we changed the main verb so that the verb, not the prepositional phrase, described the action. The resulting sentence is both clear and pleasant.