Monday, April 22, 2019

Sentence with two clauses linked by "that"




How can I improve the sentence I have below in terms of grammar and clarity?



To my mind, the sentence has 2 problems:




  1. It is quite long and possibly lacks clarity (I would like to test that).


  2. It contains two clauses linked by 'that', which I think may be poor grammatical form (maybe I'm wrong about this?)






In September 1882, the collective's system leaders submitted their
application to the government, who subsequently invited them to submit
a revised application that should provide more clarity on how the
system will address the challenges that it faces.



Answer



Your sentence actually has more than two clauses. Simplification is the starting point for complex sentences, so let us start by dividing off the first clause and go from there.




In September 1882, the collective's system leaders submitted their application to the government. It subsequently invited them to submit a revised application to provide more clarity on how the system will address potential challenges.





Without context, clarity is an issue. Who is the collective? Application for what? What system? Thus it is hard to judge how good my changes actually are.


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