<story><title>How to Write in Plain English</title><url>http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/how-to-write-in-plain-english.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dgellow</author><text>&amp;gt; Don&amp;#x27;t make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head.&lt;p&gt;Funny to read this as I&amp;#x27;m learning German! In German the main verb of a sentence has to be at the end depending on the context (e.g: if it is a question, or following some prepositions such as &amp;quot;dass&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s say we want to build a question, it will be constructed this way:&lt;p&gt;1. question marker (such as &amp;quot;Was&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Wo&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Warum&amp;quot;, etc)&lt;p&gt;2. subject&lt;p&gt;3. other details regarding the subject (adjectives and others)&lt;p&gt;4. the verb, with correct grammatical form depending on the subject&lt;p&gt;Something I find quite frustrating is that I have to keep in mind everything about the subject during the entire duration of the sentence just to be able to use the verb correctly. So because of this I always try to keep the distance between a subject and the verb as short as possible when trying to speak German, which results in very terse sentences that looks similar to what you described.&lt;p&gt;My life partner speaks native German and doesn&amp;#x27;t even realize that she does this buffering.</text></item><item><author>nicbou</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head. Reorder or split sentences until it can be avoided. In other words, use a &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; small buffer.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You must fill form 331 unless you are over 60 years old, in which case you must fill form 445.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You must fill form 331. If you are over 60 years old, you must fill 445 instead.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you are over 60 years old, you must fill form 445. Otherwise, you must fill form 331.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You might have noticed that the last version is an if-else statement.</text></item><item><author>gorgoiler</author><text>Writing clearly is like playing Tetris.  Sentences should be presented with clauses that drop down and slot together efficiently.  At the earliest available opportunity you drop in a block that completes the line and points are won&amp;#x2F;made.&lt;p&gt;This can also make for rather dull writing and I appreciate the irony in this paragraph:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; However, at first you may still find yourself writing the odd long sentence, especially when trying to explain a complicated point. But most long sentences can be broken up in some way.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here we see the Tetris player drop a sequence of blocks leaving a 3x1 gap down the left edge.  Where are they going with this?  More blocks stack up on the middle and right, there are “bubbles” in the pile that are covered by squares and there’s still that annoying gap on the left holding them back from clearing.  Time passes.  The screen is now getting dangerously full.&lt;p&gt;Then they drop in a pair of 4x1 blocks that completes rows 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6.  The bubbles on rows 4 and 7 become exposed making a T shaped hole.   The next block to fall is a T shape.  The screen clears, the sentence’s cognitive buffer is flushed, and we move on to the next point.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>notahacker</author><text>A famously playful version of this is the first sentence of Kafka&amp;#x27;s Metamophorphosis. The reader has the concept of Gregor Samsa waking in his bed from uneasy dreams and then a monstrous vermin in their heads, and the verb they&amp;#x27;re definitely not expecting to link this subject and object is &amp;#x27;transformed into&amp;#x27;...&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a pain for the translator to pull off the same effect in most other languages.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to Write in Plain English</title><url>http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/how-to-write-in-plain-english.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dgellow</author><text>&amp;gt; Don&amp;#x27;t make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head.&lt;p&gt;Funny to read this as I&amp;#x27;m learning German! In German the main verb of a sentence has to be at the end depending on the context (e.g: if it is a question, or following some prepositions such as &amp;quot;dass&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s say we want to build a question, it will be constructed this way:&lt;p&gt;1. question marker (such as &amp;quot;Was&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Wo&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Warum&amp;quot;, etc)&lt;p&gt;2. subject&lt;p&gt;3. other details regarding the subject (adjectives and others)&lt;p&gt;4. the verb, with correct grammatical form depending on the subject&lt;p&gt;Something I find quite frustrating is that I have to keep in mind everything about the subject during the entire duration of the sentence just to be able to use the verb correctly. So because of this I always try to keep the distance between a subject and the verb as short as possible when trying to speak German, which results in very terse sentences that looks similar to what you described.&lt;p&gt;My life partner speaks native German and doesn&amp;#x27;t even realize that she does this buffering.</text></item><item><author>nicbou</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head. Reorder or split sentences until it can be avoided. In other words, use a &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; small buffer.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You must fill form 331 unless you are over 60 years old, in which case you must fill form 445.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You must fill form 331. If you are over 60 years old, you must fill 445 instead.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you are over 60 years old, you must fill form 445. Otherwise, you must fill form 331.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You might have noticed that the last version is an if-else statement.</text></item><item><author>gorgoiler</author><text>Writing clearly is like playing Tetris.  Sentences should be presented with clauses that drop down and slot together efficiently.  At the earliest available opportunity you drop in a block that completes the line and points are won&amp;#x2F;made.&lt;p&gt;This can also make for rather dull writing and I appreciate the irony in this paragraph:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; However, at first you may still find yourself writing the odd long sentence, especially when trying to explain a complicated point. But most long sentences can be broken up in some way.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here we see the Tetris player drop a sequence of blocks leaving a 3x1 gap down the left edge.  Where are they going with this?  More blocks stack up on the middle and right, there are “bubbles” in the pile that are covered by squares and there’s still that annoying gap on the left holding them back from clearing.  Time passes.  The screen is now getting dangerously full.&lt;p&gt;Then they drop in a pair of 4x1 blocks that completes rows 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6.  The bubbles on rows 4 and 7 become exposed making a T shaped hole.   The next block to fall is a T shape.  The screen clears, the sentence’s cognitive buffer is flushed, and we move on to the next point.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ThePadawan</author><text>I had a Brazilian roommate who could second this. He (jokingly) complained this was the absolute worst when dealing with split-proposition-verbs:&lt;p&gt;E. g. &amp;quot;aufgeben&amp;quot; translated part-by-part is &amp;quot;upgive&amp;quot;, so &amp;quot;to surrender&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;to give up&amp;quot; in English.&lt;p&gt;However, in sth. like 3rd position singular, the form would be &amp;quot;er gibt auf&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;he gives up&amp;quot;). But in German, the object goes &lt;i&gt;between&lt;/i&gt; &amp;quot;gives&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;up&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Thus, my roommate mentioned a sentence like &amp;quot;Der Präsident &lt;i&gt;gibt&lt;/i&gt; sein Versprechen zur Verbesserung der Arbeitslosigkeitsquote &lt;i&gt;auf&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; (The President &lt;i&gt;gives up&lt;/i&gt; his promise about improving unemploymemt rates).&lt;p&gt;So yeah, parsing German sometimes results a pause while everyone unwinds their stack.</text></comment>