Day 295: When possible, subordinate qualifications.

A qualification is a statement that says your idea is not true in every situation or that makes some point about your idea. The qualification is not your main point; it is about your main point. You want to express it without confusing the reader into believing that it is your main point or that it is as important to the topic as your main point.

For example, let’s say you are writing about using social media for marketing purposes. You could write this:

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“Social media present new opportunities for reaching your target market segment. You need to be consistent in updating your social media outlets.”

What’s the main point here? Is this about how social media provides opportunities or about how you need to use it consistently? In this case, the writer wants to talk about opportunities, not about consistent use. Without subordination, it is not clear.

To improve this, we take the qualifying statement (i.e., consistent updates) and make it subordinate to the main point (i.e., new opportunities). This gives us the following sentence.

“Social media present new opportunities for reaching your market segment, although you need to be consistent in updating your social media outlets.”

This is better. However, the reader will put more emphasis on the final statement in a sentence. As it is written, the final statement is not the main point; it is a qualifier. To improve the sentence, we’ll move the subordinate statement to the beginning of the sentence, leaving the main point in the final position for emphasis.

“Although you need to update them consistently, social media outlets present new opportunities for reaching your target market segment.”

Now the reader will know and focus on the point of the sentence.