3.17 Phrases in parentheses
Phrases in parentheses can considerably increase the length of a sentence.
Parentheses are best used just to give short lists that act as examples. For example:
Several members of the European Union (e.g. Spain, France and German) have success-
fully managed to reduce their top tax threshold from 42 to 38%.
In the example above the information in parentheses does not interrupt the logical
flow of the sentence and it does not occupy much space.
Parentheses should be avoided when giving explanations or examples that are not
lists. For example:
original version (ov)
revised version (rv)
Using automatic translation software (e.g.
Google Translate, Babelfish, and Systran)
can considerably ease the work of researchers
when they need to translate documents thus
saving them money (for example the fee
they might have otherwise had to pay to a
professional translator)
and increasing the
amount of time they have to spend in the
laboratory rather than at the PC.
Using automatic translation software
(e.g. Google Translate, Babelfish, and
Systran)
can considerably ease the work
of researchers when they need to translate
documents. Such software saves them
money, for example the fee they might have
otherwise had to pay to a professional
translator.
It also increases the amount of
time they have to spend in the laboratory
rather than at the PC.
In the OV the first use of parentheses is fine, but the second interrupts the flow of
the sentence and considerably adds to its length.
51
3.18 Summary
3.18 Summary
You don’t lose any of the complexity of your thought by dividing up a long sen-
tence into shorter ones. The information contained is exactly the same. All you have
done is to present that information in a way that is easy for the reader to absorb at
a first reading.
To increase readability:
don’t separate the subject from its verb using more than 8–10 words
¶
avoid adding extra information to the end of the main clause, if the main clause
¶
is already about 15–20 words long
check to make sure that a sentence has a maximum of 30 words, and don’t use
¶
more than three or four 30-word sentences in the whole paper
consider beginning a new sentence if the original sentence is long and contains
¶
one or more of the following (or equivalents): and, which, a link word, the -ing
form, in order to
maximize the use of periods (.). Use the minimum number of commas (,), avoid
¶
semicolons (;) and parentheses
don’t worry about repeating key words. If dividing up a long sentence into
¶
shorter sentences means that you have to repeat key words, this is not a problem.
In fact this repetition will increase the clarity of your writing
Note: using and, which and the -ing form often leads to ambiguity (Sects.
6.1
–
6.5
).
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53
A. Wallwork, English for Writing Research Papers,
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-7922-3_4, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
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