Writing Exercise

Find a page of your own writing (perhaps one of the exercises you’ve already completed for this class). For each sentence on the page, answer two questions:

1. How many words are there between the beginning of the sentence and the main verb?
2. How many words are there between the subject and the verb?

Now, pick five sentences with a delayed verb and/or a big gap between subject and verb. Rewrite those sentences so that the reader gets through the subject-verb nexus more quickly. For each pair of sentences, which do you think is better, your original version, or your rewrite?