Day 279: Limit yourself to one introductory phrase or clause.

Readers want to know who did what. This means that when they read your writing, they are mainly looking for the subject and main verb of the sentence. Anything that delays finding the subject and main verb weakens your writing.

On the other hand, if your sentence has several descriptive phrases or clauses in a string after the subject or main verb, you may wish to move one or more to the beginning. Consider this sentence.

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“John returned clients’ phone calls instead of listening to the traffic report as he was driving home while already stuck in traffic.”

We can reduce the string of modifying phrases and clauses by moving one to the position before the subject.

“As he was driving home, John returned clients’ phone calls instead of listening to the traffic report while he was already stuck in traffic.”

We used this tip to move only one clause to the beginning, resulting in a clear, simple sentence.