Review of Subject Variations

By: Sean Savoie 

By far the biggest difference between good writers and excellent writers is the use of various types of nouns as the subjects and objects of sentences. Especially when writing essays involving larger ideas, a writer using well-developed noun clauses and gerund phrases as subjects of sentences enables him or her to be extremely concise.

If a professor or the new SAT test assigns an essay that takes a position on the relationship between the First Amendment freedoms and the need for censorship as a means to combat terrorism, many students can write using intelligent information. But writing students too often use simple grammatical subjects and create wordy sentences.

We should take a look at how to revise an idea by focusing on the subjects of the sentences. How can we revise the below student sample paragraph? 

Wordy student sample:

   I do not think the 1st Amendment freedom of the press is being used very wisely. Most people feel that if the newspapers and news magazines can publish anything they want to that all people will be safer. If this is true, why do I always see information about vulnerable locations in the U.S. published in the news? People need to realize that Al Qaeda gets much of its information in the New York Times. I hardly call that safe. Shouldn’t the press have a responsibility? Most people would agree that giving away potentially damaging information about their country is a bad choice. We need to make some law allowing the government to control some of the information that people read. (121 words) 

Notice the grammatical subjects of the sentences, ( I, most people, I, people, I, the press, most people, and we). To improve the focus of a paragraph, grammatically play with the sentences and vary the subject, making the subject the main idea of the sentence. This distinction between what the topic is and who is expressing the opinion is extremely important to understand. If there is more persona, the topic may become secondary to the personality of the writer. In some writing this is desirable, but not with the topic given above.

Take a look at one possible improvement keeping the same number of sentences but changing the subject. 

      Improvement on student example:

      The 1st Amendment freedom of the press is being used unwisely. Safety is often thought to be a result of the freedom of the press, yet the vulnerable locations in the U.S.A. are often published.  Al Qaeda gets much of its information, which is hardly safe, from the New York Times. Should the press have a responsibility? Giving away potentially damaging information is clearly a bad choice. Law must work to control some of the information that is publicly accessible. (80 words) 

With some consideration of the relationship between the sentences, a writer can focus solely on the necessary words. Notice how the exact same idea is improved in the paragraph below:     

  Concise example:

            With safety often thought to be the primary result of the freedom of the press, the 1st Amendment right is being used unwisely to the degree that terrorists, such as Al Qaeda, get publicly available, potentially damaging information about U.S. vulnerabilities. Laws must be enacted to prevent certain information from benefiting enemies of the nation. (55 words) 

A loose paragraph of 121 words is reduced to 55 words with more clarity. The above paragraph not only focuses on the topic as the grammatical subject, but also combines the sentences most efficiently by expressing the relationship between the ideas. The writing of this type of airtight paragraph takes practice, but this technique is not the only way to write a good one; college students and high school students who take the SAT, however, should attempt to master this technique.

On college application essays, colleges often require aspiring students to fit a pregnant load of opinion into 500 words or less, resulting in rather shallow development of ideas. Student writers should compose a much longer essay and then delete as much as possible while experimenting with various arrangements of the sentences. This kind of exercise itself may not be so fun, but the use of the resulting skill can be fun and lucrative, so try to enjoy while battling spring fever.