Page 160 - English for Writing Research Papers

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8.4 Construct your sentences to help the reader’s eye
automatically fall on the key information
On what part of S1 does your eye fall?
S1. The goal of the service discovery is twofold: (i) allow devices to advertise the services

they provide. and (ii) allow the clients to find the services they need.
Your eye probably falls on this part: twofold: (i) allow

This is because our eye falls on those parts of a sentence that are different from
others:

• punctuation marks – particularly brackets, colons, exclamation marks and
question marks given that these are less frequently used than commas
• white spaces, for example after a full stop (period) or between paragraphs

• numbers

• capital letters

Does twofold: (i) allow contain any interesting information? No. So S1 wastes an
opportunity to get the reader’s attention. A better solution is:

S2. The goal of the service discovery is to allow: (i) devices to advertise the services they

provide, and (ii) clients to find the services they need.
In S2 the reader’s eye will fall on devices and clients , exactly the two things the
author wants the readers to focus on!

How is this achieved?

• is twofold has been removed (totally redundant as it is immediately followed
by two numbers)

• allow has been relocated to before the colon, so that after the colon the reader
immediately sees the key words ( devices and clients )

The German-born American abstract expressionist painter, Hans Hoffman, once
remarked: “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the
necessary can speak”. In fact S2 would be better rewritten as:

S3. Service discovery enables: (i) devices to advertise the services they provide, and (ii) cli-
ents to find the services they need.