Towards an Understanding of Mature Writing: Analyzing and Paraphrasing Complex Noun Phrases
Michael Paul Jordan · Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie · 1993
T11is article challenges the commonly lu!ld view tlUlt long sentences and complex structures are 1111desirable features ef writing.Indeed the claim is made t/Ult,Jor prose intended far mature readers, writers must leam to use complex 1101m phrases in long sentences to emulate effective mature writing.Based 011 a scholarly article by a11 a1vard-wim1i11g writer, the analysis explains lww -ed, -ing, relative, verbless, prepositional, a11d to-infinitive clauses are used to create comp/e.....; postt11odifled noun phrases i11 differe11t positions in the sentence.For eac/1 example, a paraphrase is offered which does not use a complex 1101111 phrase, and the two versions are compared.In addition, anaphoric comple..x 11ow1 phrases are briiifly discussed. Baclq~round and MotivationReadability Formulas 39 TRADITIONAL WISDOM IN TECHNICAL WRITING informs us that we should create relatively short sentences to make our writing more readable.Flesch (1951), Gunning (1968) and others have provided us with formulas for calculating the readability of texts based largely on sentence length and 1.I am most grateful to Miclucl Bell, the author of the article used as the basis for this work.for his