Day 93: Use an introductory adverbial phrase or clause to reduce sentence complexity.

An introductory adverbial phrase/clause is a description of the action that occurs before the subject in a sentence, and it is followed by a comma. Here is a sentence with an introductory adverbial clause:

“When John saw the car approaching, he hid behind the tree.”

The adverbial clause is “when John saw the car approaching,” and it describes the action “hid.”

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A sentence with multiple explanatory phrases may be difficult to understand. This is especially true if they are strung together, i.e., one follows immediately after the other. Consider this sentence.

“John would not have yelled at his wife while she was providing directions as they drove to the shopping mall if he had understood her intentions.”

This sentence has several adverbial phrases and clauses, including 1) “while she was providing directions,” 2) “as they drove,” and 3) “if he had understood her intentions.” Because they are strung together, they make this sentence confusing. The reader has to keep revising his understanding of what happened and when.

Also, if the explanations are strung together, the reader has to do a lot of work, and this makes reading tedious. In the meantime, nothing is happening in the sentence. The main action has already occurred or hasn’t yet occurred. In this sentence, the main action is “would have yelled.” All the descriptive phrases are written after the main action.

We can apply this tip to the sample sentence. We will move “if he had understood his wife’s intentions” before the subject. This gives us the following revision.

“If he had understood his wife’s intentions, John would not have yelled at her for providing directions as they drove to the mall.”

This revision is more direct and easier to understand. Also, it is more active because the main action breaks up the string of descriptions.

We could have moved a different description. We moved “If John had understood his wife’s intentions” because 1) the subject of the introductory adverbial clause is the same as the subject of the sentence, which is required, and 2) it is a different type of adverbial phrase than the others in that it explains why the action occurred and not when it occurred. This was, of course, a subjective decision.