Local Revision: Variety

Sentence variety helps the audience stay awake. Without sentence variety, the audience doesn't have interesting and different sentences to spice up their reading experience.

Link to draft

Spengler, Jessica. "Spices" 2/11/10 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Tips for sentence variety from Rules for Writers:

1) Vary your sentence openings

2) Use a variety of sentence structures

3) Try inverting sentences occasionally

1. How much variation is there in your sentence structures in the current draft? Can you spot any repetitive or redundant sentence patterns in your writing? Provide a cogent analysis of what the Rules for Writers reading tells you about your sentences.

Over all there seems to be a fail amount of sentence structure variety in my draft. However, I do tend to start sentences with clauses or conjunctions. I find that I favor sentence structures that state a problem, then a follow up sentence that starts with "however"(as you can see from the first two sentences of my response).

2. What about paragraph structures, including transitions between different paragraphs?

Obvious transitions are sparse. I generally wrap paragraphs up quickly and then create a new heading that starts to introduce the next topic. After major parts, I have a single sentence that summarizes that part and then a new heading. There are many different paragraphs as I split them up to allow the reader to skim through my QRG more easily.

3. What about vocabulary? Is there variety and flavor in your use of vocabulary? What are the main strengths and weaknesses of the draft's approach to vocabulary?

Most of the vocabulary variety and flavor come from the numerous imagery intensive paragraphs. The imagery paragraphs have strong vocab but the rest has standard speaking vocab. The strengths of having common vocabulary is that people can skim easily and not pause to ponder any words. Common vocab also lends a more familiar and informal tone, which is more enjoyable to read for fun than a stuffy document.