What Is the Difference between “A” Writing and “B” Writing?

Students sometimes wonder what is the difference between writing which receives a mark of “A” and that which receives only a “B.” The difference can usually be summed up in 12 words: variety, conciseness, clarity and completeness, sentence types, sentence variety, and sentence combining.

è è VARIETY

§ § Varying the kinds of sentences you use can make your writing lively and distinctive.

§ § If you experiment with sentence structure, you increase the chance of readers’ paying attention to what you write.

§ § To avoid the choppiness produced by a series of short sentences, you can lengthen sentences by:

§ § Subordination

§ § Coordination

§ § (Sometimes abrupt sentences may be used for special effects.)

§ § Relying too heavily on beginning with a subject can make your writing monotonous; use alternative beginnings:

§ § Begin with an adverb

(e.g. suddenly,…)

§ § Begin with a prepositional phrase

(e.g. out of necessity,…)

§ § Begin with a transition

(e.g. first, then, furthermore, etc.)

§ § Remember that when you are experimenting with sentence structure, subordination is as important as coordination.

è è CONCISENESS:

Avoiding Wordiness and Needless Repetition

§ § Unnecessary words or phrases distract readers and should be omitted.

§ § Repetition is a sign of inefficiency.

§ § Avoid:

§ § Redundancy

(repeating for no good reason)

§ § Unnecessary, inexact words

§ § Combining sentences or simplifying phrases can eliminate needless words.

§ § Use pronouns to avoid needlessly repeating a noun or using clumsy synonyms.

è è CLARITY AND COMPLETENESS

§ § Words that are often omitted in speech are often needed in writing to make the meaning clear.

(e.g. We better study hardàWe had better study hard)

è è SENTENCE TYPES

§ § Simple Sentence: One main clause: Contains one subject, one verb, and expresses a complete thought

(Note: The subject and/or the verb can be compound)

§ § Compound Sentence: Contains two or more main clauses and no subordinate clauses

(Note: These are connected by a semicolon or a comma + coordinate conjunction. They connect main clauses which should be related to each other logically.)

§ § Complex Sentence: Has one main clause and one or more subordinate clauses.

§ § Compound-Complex Sentence: Contains two or more main clauses and one or more subordinate clauses.

è è SENTENCE VARIETY

§ § Good writing contains a variety of sentence structures and types.

§ § Another way to improve sentence structure is by the use of parallelism. (In a series, nouns should be balanced with nouns, verbs with verbs, adjectives with adjectives, etc.)

è è SENTENCE COMBINING

§ § Sentence combining contributes to a smooth flow of sentences and avoids choppiness that results from a string of main clauses (machine gun effect).

§ § Avoid choppiness and strung-out compound sentences by:

§ § Subordinating

§ § Using compound verbs

§ § Using phrases

§ § Rewriting one sentence into two or more sentences