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Problems involving sentence-style cause writing to be unclear, wordy, unemphatic, and difficult to read. But sentences with these kinds of style problems are not necessarily grammatically incorrect—--nor do they violate any of the commonly accepted standards of usage. Yes, perfectly wretched, unreadable writing can be perfectly error-free! Federal, state, and local government—as well as academicians and lawyers in general—have long been the primary resource for wordy, pompous, and just plain bad writing. However, with the Plain English Movement, William Clinton's 1998 Presidential Memorandum on Plain Language, and similar events in state and local governments— government writing is becoming less and less an easy target. This chapter reviews some of the most common sentence-style problems, showing how to recognize them and how to fix them. Surely many others exist —we've just not trapped and labeled them yet. But in the wilds of bad writing, being able to recognize and revise sentence-style problems covered in this chapter will take you a long way—and enable you to recognize other types of problems as well.
McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Style Guides>Minimalism