A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, 7th edition - Kate L. Turabian 2007

Focus on the first seven or eight words of a sentence - Avoid long introductory phrases and clauses
Revising sentences
Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

Your last big task is to make your sentences as clear as your ideas allow. On some occasions, you may know your writing is awkward, especially if you're writing about an unfamiliar and complex topic for intimidating readers. In fact, you may even feel you've forgotten how to write clearly at all. You need a plan to revise sentences that you can see need help, but even more, you need a way first to identify those that you think are fine, but that readers might think are not.

We can't tell you how to fix every problem in every sentence, but we can tell you how to deal with those that most often afflict a writer struggling to sound like a “serious scholar,” a style that most experienced readers think is just pretentious. Here is a short example:

1a. An understanding of terrorist thinking could achieve improvements in the protection of the public.

However impressive that sounds, the student who wrote it meant only this:

1b. If we understood how terrorists think, we could protect the public better.

To diagnose (1a) and revise it into (1b), however, you must know a few grammatical terms: noun, verb, active verb, passive verb, whole subject, simple subject, main clause, subordinate clause. If they're a dim memory, skim a grammar guide before you go on.

11.1 Focus on the first seven or eight words of a sentence

Just as the key to a clearly written report, section, or paragraph is in its first few sentences, so is the key to a clearly written sentence in its first few words. When readers grasp those first seven or eight words easily, they read what follows faster, understand it better, and remember it longer. It is the difference between these two sentences:

2a. The Federalists' argument in regard to the destabilization of government by popular democracy arose from their belief in the tendency of factions to further their self-interest at the expense of the common good.

2b. The Federalists argued that popular democracy destabilized government, because they believed that factions tended to further their self-interest at the expense of the common good.

To write a sentence like (2b), or to revise one like (2a) into (2b), follow these seven principles:

Avoid introducing more than a few sentences with long phrases and clauses; get to the subject of your sentence quickly.

Make subjects short and concrete, ideally naming the character that performs the action expressed by the verb that follows.

Avoid interrupting the subject and verb with more than a word or two.

Put key actions in verbs, not in nouns.

Put information familiar to readers at the beginning of a sentence, new information at the end.

Choose active or passive verbs to reflect the previous principles.

Use first person pronouns appropriately.

Those principles add up to this: readers want to get past a short, concrete, familiar subject quickly and easily to a verb expressing a specific action. When you do that, the rest of your sentence will usually take care of itself. To diagnose your own writing, look for those characteristics in it. Skim the first seven or eight words of every sentence. Look closely at sentences that don't meet those criteria, then revise them as follows.

11.1.1 Avoid long introductory phrases and clauses

Compare these two sentences (introductory phrases are boldfaced; whole subjects italicized):

3a. In view of claims by researchers on higher education indicating at least one change by most undergraduate students of their major field of study, first-year students seem not well informed about choosing a major field of study.

3b. Researchers on higher education claim that most students change their major field of study at least once during their undergraduate careers. If that is so, then first-year students seem not well informed when they choose a major.

Most readers find (3a) harder to read than (3b), because it makes them work through a twenty-four-word phrase before they reach its subject (first-year students). In the two sentences in (3b), readers immediately start with a subject, Researchers, or reach it after a very short clause, If that is so.

The principle is this: start most of your sentences directly with their subjects. Begin only a few sentences with introductory phrases or clauses longer than ten or so words. You can usually revise long introductory phrases and subordinate clauses into their own independent sentences as in (3b).