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Monday, March 30, 2009

Poll Results 29

This was the question:

How would you make the second sentence clearer? "She drank some coffee. After the sun rose."
Join the two sentences together. 63 (62%)

Add punctuation to the second sentence. 4 (3%)

Reword it completely. 34 (33%)

It's perfectly clear as is. 0 (0%)

Quite a tricky question, actually. The answer I was looking for was what only 4 of you suggested. I was looking for "After, the sun rose." I made up this sentence because I was reading a book and came across a similar sentence that began with "After." I had to read it several times to get the real meaning. If you are going to start a sentence with a preposition, it's often a good idea to put a comma after the prepositional phrase--to avoid ambiguity and confusion.

2 comments:

cmh_geek said...

"After, the sun rose" works, but IMO it's still not as clear as if the sentences were combined ("After she drank some coffee, the sun rose") or reworded ("She drank some coffee. The sun rose shortly after.")

Jennifer said...

I agree with the previous comment. Yes, your comma makes the sentence work, but it is still awkward.

I prefer the rewritten sentences.