Out-of-focus ideas

- Sometimes have you noticed that sentences just feel out of focus? It can be quite obvious, like here. I really enjoyed the concert, it took me back to another era. The technical term for that is comma splicing where you're basically using a comma where there really should be a harder stop between the two ideas in order to make the two independent points connect properly. Can you just feel that the two points should be expressed more independently than that? Well, this sentence is similar. Paul is a hard-working student, some days he doesn't go to sleep until the early hours. Somehow the comma doesn't do enough to route the two ideas firmly in place. Can you just sort of feel that? Can you try using different punctuation and words to express the two points in both those examples in a better and smoother way? Try to come up with as many ways as you can. How did it go? Here are some of my attempts. I really enjoyed the concert. It took me back to another era. I really enjoyed the concert, semicolon, it took me back to another era. So, first we had the full stop, now we've got a semicolon. I really enjoyed the concert: it took me back to another era. So, there we have a colon. I really enjoyed the concert, dash, it took me back to another era. I really enjoyed the concert, comma, which took me back to another era. And then with this one. So, we've put the sentence into focus, all those sentences into focus. So, here's another type of out of focus sentence. As an unapologetic meat eater, comma, friends often ask me whether I ever eat salad. I don't wanna get into the formal grammatical aspects of why it might be problematic, but can you feel that it's slightly off? Now, I agree that you can basically make sense out of it, but notice how placing the word friends where it is just throws the reader off a little bit because the first part, as an unapologetic meat eater, sets up the reader's attention to expect this unapologetic meat eater to reenter the picture, not some other entity, in this case, friends. For that reason, the idea is out of focus. Now, as elite writers, remember that we want to prevent even a moment's disruption for our reader, so I wanna show you that it's possible to identify problems like this in your writing simply by using common sense ideas like out of focus. When you're rooted in trying to maximize clarity for your readers, you're going to just feel when something isn't quite right. So, how would you rectify the sentence by kind of moving stuff around? Have a go yourself first. Okay, here's what I might do. Friends often ask me whether, as an unapologetic meat eater, I ever eat salad. Or I might write it like this. Friends often ask me whether I, as an unapologetic meat eater, ever eat salad. Each of those solutions has its own kind of rhythm and one of them you might prefer better than another, and a certain effect on comprehension, too, perhaps, but notice how neither of them cause even a moment's disruption to your understanding of the idea, your basic understanding of it. The reading experience is smooth in both cases, isn't it? And it's merely to do with the placing of the words. The small shift we've made here creates firmness and certainly about the meaning. In other words, it's clearer. Now, here are some more examples of out of focus ideas. An Apple media statement said it will launch the new iPhone early next year. Now, it will be obvious to most people that the it here is supposed to refer to Apple, but do notice that it's out of focus. There's a little jarring effect and I hope you can feel it. Why is it there? Because it reads as if the statement is the thing that's gonna launch the iPhone. So, how would you resolve that problem? Okay, here's what I might do to make the meaning more clear. In a media statement, Apple said it would launch the new iPhone early next year. Okay, once again, feel your way through this one. It's also a similarly out of focus idea. Looking into the distance, a tall building came into view. Now, what's wrong with it? I want you to just try to feel where the problem is rather than thinking about, necessarily, grammatical rules. It's out of focus because the phrase, looking into the distance, doesn't have any connection to a person who is doing the looking. Without that key element, it may even sound, for a moment, at least, as though the building was looking into the distance. In any case, it's definitely out of focus, and I hope you're beginning to see that and kind of feel your way through that. Sentences like that are commonly referred to in grammar as containing dangling modifiers. In this instance, that just means that it isn't clear which bit of the sentence, the first part, relates to. But I'm showing you here that you can usually just feel that there's a problem anyway. You just don't get the click that lets you feel that everything's okay and you're looking for those failures to click in order to spot these out of focus sentences, and when you spot them, you need to fix them. So, how would you fix this one? I'll tell you that, in this case, the person doing the looking is called Marcus, let's say, so have a go. Okay, here's what I might say. As Marcus looked into the distance, a tall building came into view. See how that's now perfectly in focus? How there's no room at all for misunderstanding or doubt or there's no going blank? When you make sure all of your sentences are in focus like this, you ensure that your readers never stumble and that's another thing that goes to what's creating exceptional writing, so it's something I want you to really start paying attention to.