Choose one piece of writing to practice with the style principles we have been studying this week. You are welcome to use your current draft of the contribution paper that you have been working on or something from other classes.

This assignment has three parts:

For each part you will choose a sentence or section from your chosen piece of writing. For parts 1 and 2, include the original and the edited product. Notice how you change each sentence and how it helps the meaning of your writing become more clear, concise, readable, or persuasive.

1. Choose two sentences from your piece of writing. Identify the agent in each sentence. Edit each sentence to make the grammatical subject the same as the agent. After you have finished, now edit the both sentences a second time to be in passive voice.

2. Choose the longest sentence that you can find in your piece of writing. Use Chapter 12 on Sentence Clarity and Conciseness to edit this sentence. Identify the agent of the sentence and make it clear. Get rid of unnecessary words.

3. Think through the editing work you have done. Write a few paragraphs addressing the edits. How does making the agent more clear change the sentence? How does changing the sentence to passive voice change the meaning? tone? clarity? Does one of your sentences make more sense in passive voice? What patterns did you see as you were looking for sentences to edit? To you write long/complex sentences? Do you use a lot of passive voice? Is there anything else you’ve noticed about your writing style?