Here’s a practice question from the SAT. How would you fix the underlined sentence?

There are over 50,000 therapy dogs in the United States, and they’re becoming more popular in countries from Norway to Brazil. Trained and certified by a variety of organizations, hospitals and other facilities welcome these dogs and their handlers, who interact with patients.

According to the SAT, this is a better version:

Trained and certified by a variety of organizations, these dogs and their handlers interact with patients and are welcomed by hospitals and other facilities.

The SAT is right, of course. The original sentence is confusing to read. I found myself stumbling over this: “Trained and certified by a variety of organizations, hospitals, and other facilities….” The word hospitals sounds like it goes with “a variety of organizations,” but actually it’s the beginning of a new idea.

But the SAT’s sentence isn’t much of an improvement, for two reasons. There’s too much information, and it’s weak.  “Interact with patients” is the most important idea. Put it early.

Standardized tests are full of test questions like this one. No professional writer would write such a dull sentence! It’s a string of facts that aren’t connected. For example, we don’t learn why the dogs are trained and certified.

Here’s my version: 

Hospital patients enjoy playing with these dogs, which are trained to interact with patients in hospitals and other health facilities.

Photo courtesy of Jami430 (CC License)

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I think formal grammar is a waste of time.

There’s a widespread belief that if you know grammar well, you’ll be able to solve every writing problem. I think that’s wrong, and I have an example for you today.

Take a look at these two sentences:

1.  We need to inventory the bikes, scooters, and wagons stored in the annex.

2.  We need to inventory the bikes, the scooters, and the wagons stored in the annex.

In #1, you know that everything – bikes, scooters, and wagons – is stored in the annex. But in #2 maybe only the wagons are stored in the annex – there’s no way to know.

I often hear from writers who are looking for an easy trick that will unravel a sentence problem. “If I move the comma, will that fix it?”

Usually my answer is sorry – no. Most of the time you’ll need to rewrite the sentence. Here’s my version of today’s sentence:

We need to inventory the bikes and scooters in the showroom and the wagons stored in the annex.  BETTER

Roy Peter Clark has made a list of 50 Writing Tools that’s worth reading. If you’re serious about writing, you can learn a lot by reading (and pondering) one or two of his tools every day. Here’s the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JaNiIY3FL4rjVGhbwn3K_jQpHRM6DYWe/view?usp=sharing

I have two reasons for liking Clark’s tools so much. First, he knows what he’s talking about. Second, his crisp, concise style challenges you to think about what he’s telling you. You have to figure it out yourself – and that’s one of the best ways to learn about writing.

What’s an Oxford comma? It’s the comma before and in a list. In the sentence below, there’s an Oxford comma after tea:

We served coffee, tea, and cake to our guests.

Students are sometimes told that God (or Moses, or someone) made a rule that the Oxford comma is wrong. (That happens to journalism students all the time.)

No, it isn’t. The Oxford comma is a choice.

That comma is wrong if you’re writing for a newspaper or magazine. (If omitting that comma messes up the sentence, you put it back in.)

Here are some rules:

• If you’re a journalist, you omit it.
• If you’re an academic, you use it.
• If someone’s paying you to write, you ask them their policy about that comma, and you follow it.
• If that comma (or the lack of it) causes a problem with a sentence, you fix it.
• If you’re writing on your own, you make your own decision.
• What you never (ever!) do is argue about it.