If your general meaning is clear, but you or your reader stumbles over or is confused by a word or sentence, you might need to vary your sentence structure for flow. Usually, a sentence that lacks flow has one of the problems described below. Read the information and examples on each tab carefully so that you're prepared to revise sentences for flow later in this lesson.
Repeated Words
Parts of Speech
Lack of Parallelism
As you have already seen, the repetition of a word can break the flow of a sentence.
ORIGINAL: What we need to find out from the experiment is is this mixture acidic or basic.
REVISION: The goal of our experiment is to learn if the mixture is acidic or basic.
Why do you think repeated words cause readers to stumble?
One reason readers stumble over repeated words may be because they think the repeated word is a typing error, or "typo."
Different parts of speech that are spelled the same can break the flow of a sentence. For example, states can be both a noun and a verb. Read the following sentence:
The "rule of three" states that bad things happen in 3's.
It's easy to read "rule of three states" as the subject of the sentence and be confused when the next word is that. To avoid that confusion, the sentence should be revised like this:
According to the "rule of three," bad things happen in 3's.
A series of sentence parts that are worded in very different ways can break the flow of a sentence, too. When a series is parallel, all of the phrases or clauses included in it are similar in structure. For example, "signed, sealed, and delivered" is a parallel series, but "signed, with a seal, and delivered" is not. This sentence lacks parallelism:
Heather's favorite extracurricular activities are singing in the school choir, dancing with a local folk-dance troupe, and to act in community theater productions.
Which part of this sentence is not parallel to the other two?
The clause to act in community theater productions is not parallel. To be parallel, the sentence should be revised like this: Heather's favorite extracurricular activities are singing in the school choir, dancing with a local folk-dance troupe, and acting in community theater productions.
