Thursday Tip: Deft connections 1 -- Order series from short to long

Much of writing is connecting words and phrases doing the same work—multiple subjects, verbs, modifiers, objects. And most writers connect them with conjunctions and commas in common ways. We’re going to show you some uncommon connections—what we call deft connections.

A simple tip is to order pairs and series from short to long. Most of us spit out compound subjects and predicates and the elements of pairs or series as they come out of our mind—haphazardly. You can make your writing clearer by rearranging those elements from short to long and from simple to compound. Start by counting the words of each phrase, and arrange them from short to long.

Here’s a nice example from Andrew Sullivan’s Atlantic Monthly feature on Barack Obama:

Obama, moreover, is no saint. He has flaws and tics: Often tired, sometimes crabby, intermittently solipsistic, he’s a surprisingly uneven campaigner.

The series goes from short to long, both in words and complexity, drawing the reader into the more difficult “intermittently solipsistic” rather than leading with such a mouthful.

Another example:

In 2007 I traveled to Washington, D.C., Miami, and New York.

That’s okay, but notice how the eye pauses on Washington, then D.C., then Miami and New York. Another ordering, perhaps easier on the reader, would have been:

In 2007 I traveled to Miami, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Notice how readers can see all three cities without pausing. So the next time you write, try ordering your pairs and series to ease your readers’ work. But there are some exceptions: groups of words or phases listed chronologically (breakfast, lunch, dinner) or alphabetically to avoid bias (New Zealand, Russia, Tuvalu).