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Sentence combining is a technique that writers use to connect and rearrange independent and dependent clauses so that sentences are direct and expressive, establishing relationships to make reading easier. (See Section 2.1 on sentence structure.) Judicious sentence combining usually clarifies the content and improves the style.
Sentence combining helps writers eliminate excessive use of short sentences. Although short, simple sentences are usually easier to understand than longer, structurally complex sentences, they can be overused, resulting in a "primer" writing style that often insults and annoys readers. A primer style contains unnecessary repetition and may, in fact, significantly lower comprehension because subordination is seldom employed; thus, relationships among the ideas in sentences are not clear.
As a reader, how do you react to this paragraph?
EXAMPLE
High acidity kills fish. Fish in the lakes of the Northeast and Canada are dying. Coal-burning plants produce sulfur dioxide. Some clouds retain this sulfur dioxide. Rain combines with sulfur dioxide. Weak sulfuric acid is formed from rain and sulfur dioxide. Coal-burning plants produce nitrogen oxides. Some clouds retain this nitrogen oxide. Rain combines with nitrogen oxide. The combination forms nitric acid. Coal smoke is produced in the Ohio Valley. Some snow and rain originate in the Ohio Valley. This rain and snow sometimes fall in the Northeast and in Canada. The rain and snow contain sulfuric acid and nitric acid. Canada blames the Ohio Valley for the high acidity levels in lakes.
In the example, each idea is presented in a separate sentence, with no attempt made to establish relationships among the ideas. When you compare this choppy, primer version to the paragraph below (as it was originally published), you can see the importance of combining and subordinating ideas.
REVISION
High acidity levels are killing fish in the lakes of the Northeast and Canada. When rain combines with sulfur dioxide from a coal-burning plant it forms weak sulfuric acid, and when the cloud contains nitrogen oxides the product is nitric acid. Canada blames [the acidic] rain and snow originating in the smoky Ohio
Valley for its problem.
Because the relationships the writer intends are clearly expressed, the second version is easier to read than the first, which forces readers to make assumptions about these relationships that may be different from those the writer intended.
Writers use four strategies to combine sentences: adding, deleting, embedding, and transforming.
