Download a printable PDF of this article (membership required).
On the Papers: Ensuring Readers Know What Actions Are Happening in any Sentence
On the Papers: Ensuring Readers Know What Actions Are Happening in any Sentence
Vol. 38 No. 2
The author is a professor of the practice of rhetoric at Duke University.
A reader will fail to understand what a writer meant by a sentence if the reader cannot perceive what actions are supposed to be taking place therein. But exactly how does a reader go about discerning which words in a sentence are intended to convey those actions? I’ll give the relatively simple answer to that question—an answer taught almost nowhere in our educational systems—after giving you a chance to experience it in the following example, which I have explored with thousands of students and clients.
Take a moment to underline the word or words in the following sentence that you think the writer intended you to perceive as actions:
1a. What would be the employee reception accorded the introduction of such a proposal?
