ThereHere are four sets of exercises: in paragraphing, the control of sentence length, and the use of commas (two sets). ▼<font color=olive>UNDER CONSTRUCTION!</font color> ▼
▲There are four sets of exercises: in paragraphing, the control of sentence length, and the use of commas (two sets).
[[User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a|Return to the orginal article]]
When you've identified the three statements, have a look at our [[User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a: exercises in textual flow#Exercise 1: suggested solution|<b>suggested solution</b>]]. But first ...
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▲<font color=olive>UNDER CONSTRUCTION!</font color>
===Exercise 2: sentence length===
Each of these sentences is too long. Typically, the author has tried to cram too many related ideas into the sentence. In each exercise, identify these ideas, and decide where and how you'd split up the sentence for easier reading.
QUESTION B:
The need for a stronger central government with a unified currency and the ability to conduct the affairs of state, such as foreign policy (and that could bind all of the states under negotiated treaties and agreements rather than be undermined by a single state's refusal to agree to an international treaty) led to the stronger federal government that was negotiated at the Convention.
We might choose to isolate the following sequence of ideas in this sentence, although there are several other ways of locating the boundaries that would be just as useful in disentangling this complex web:
<font color=green>The need for a stronger central government with a unified currency and the ability to conduct the affairs of state</font color>, <font color=brown>such as foreign policy (and that could bind all of the states under negotiated treaties and agreements<font color=blue> rather than be undermined by a single state's refusal to agree to an international treaty) <font color=purple>led to the stronger federal government that was negotiated at the Convention</font color>.
Each of these ideas could form a single sentence; since the middle two run are particularly close, we could separate them by a semicolon rather than a full-stop. We'll need to carefully change the grammar so that each sentence—including the two segments either side of the semicolon—is a stand-alone sentence. The four ideas are coloured as above, and the extra bits that we've added—either through simple deduction from the context (e.g., "the delegates identified") or to make them fit together grammatically (e.g., "In particular" and "This", which both link to the previous clause)—are in black.
The delegates identified <font color=green>the need for a stronger central government with a unified currency and the ability to conduct the affairs of state</font color>. In particular, they saw federal control of <font color=brown>foreign policy as a way of binding all of the states under negotiated treaties and agreements</font color>; until then, <font color=brown>foreign policy </font color>had frequently been <font color=blue>undermined by a single state's refusal to agree to an international treaty</font color>. This <font color=purple>led to the negotiation of a stronger federal government at the Convention</font color>.
We started with one sentence of 64 words. We've transformed this into three sentences (four if you count the semicolon in the middle), that is slightly longer in total: 77 words: 23 + 23 + 18 + 13. The new structure is much easier to read, even though it's longer.
===Exercise 3: commas===
:Although it is the nearest star to Earth and has been intensively studied by scientists, many questions about the Sun remain unanswered; these include why its outer atmosphere has a temperature of over a million degrees K when its visible surface (the photosphere) has a temperature of just 6,000 K. Current topics of scientific enquiry include the sun's regular cycle of sunspot activity, the physics and origin of solar flares and prominences, the magnetic interaction between the chromosphere and the corona, and the origin of the solar wind.
[[User:Tony1/How_to_satisfy_Criterion_2a:_exercises_in_textual_flow#Exercise 2: sentence length|<b>Return to the next exercise</b>]]
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