English Grammar and Sentence Structure

There are many styles of writing in college. However here are some types and styles of writing that work to make writing better and which style and types of writing make the sentences awful and terrible to read.

Political science comparative legislators book
1. “Thus, for example, other scheduling power of the majority leadership on the floor corresponds the scheduling power of the chair in committee; the influence of the majority leadership and (and caucus) over committee jurisdictions corresponds to the influence of the committee chair; (and majority contingent) over subcommittee jurisdictions; and the majority leadership’s advantage in staff resources over its minority counterparts corresponds to the (rather large) advantage of committee majorities over committee minorities.”

I hated this sentence. Obviously the author of this book doesn’t know how to use a period. I felt like this sentence went on forever. Too many terms and big words were used and I just wanted this really, really, really, really, really, long sentence to end.

2. “Thus if xi is the real variable representing position in the Ith issue, the vector x= (xi….,Xw) represents an entire policy program.

I hated this sentence because I didn’t understand the author’s point when he starts talking about variables. The math terms really start to loose my interest.

3. “We have already considered the case of seniority violations at length in chapter 2, so we focus here on discharge petitions.”

I didn’t like this sentence because I thought it was really cut and dry and was downright boring. It had no adjectives or words that would make the reader interested. It merely stated a boring fact with no substance to it.

4. “Another way to gauge the difference between Democratic and Republican support for a committee’s decision is to subtract the typical level of support accorded committee decisions by non-committee Republicans from the analogous figure for non-committee Democrats.”

I found this sentence to be very convoluted and it was hard to understand what point the writer was trying to make until I carefully scrutinized this sentence.

4 Sentences I liked:
1. The speaker must decide the entire schedule for a week, a month, a session, or a Congress.
I liked this sentence because it was really short, easy to read, simple, and listed the various outcomes that could occur.

2. “The Republicans had no real say in the matter.” I liked this sentence because it is right to the point. Very short which I like and there are no wasted words. It is all substance and not big fancy words or terms to get the reader confused.

3. “They met in Altoona, Pennsylvania at the lunch counter of Tom and Joe’s, a steamy diner with twangy-voiced waitresses and graveyard stew.”

I liked this sentence because it is really descriptive and uses a lot of great adjectives like twangy. It is also an interesting sentence subject of how two people first met and you can picture the situation.

4. “They had fallen into the abyss of paradise, two more poor settlers trying to make a go of it in the City of Angels.”

I like this sentence because it uses the metaphor of the “City of Angels” and uses very imaginative and descriptive language like “abyss” and “paradise.”