If there’s any one principle you learn early on in the journalism program, it’s to make sentences short and simple, no matter how complicated, complex or confused your thoughts are-and believe me, I have some pretty confused thoughts that I have a hard time getting my head around, whether it’s because they are too big or just because I am too tired to give them my full and complete attention (sometimes I zone out and go on completely weird tangents where I have no idea what’s going on [e.g. when I’m in the car and stare forward and people think I’m angry when I’m really just thinking or wondering why the other person isn’t saying anything] or how I got there [like, you know, when you’re driving home on the freeway and you sort of space out but manage to get home in one piece nonetheless because of your natural reflexes’- this has actually gotten me into trouble before because it sometimes means I miss my exit after I’ve either gotten off too early or late because I was thinking about something else]) and I worry that those complicated thoughts will show up in my writing one day and make it unclear to my readers what my point is, which in this editorial is the importance of short and clear sentences when writing as a journalist, to the point that they get frustrated with my writing and throw down the paper, cursing my name and vowing never to read my columns ever again – so I thought it would be a good idea (not a great idea, mind you, but definitely not sub par, in my humble opinion) to remind all the journalism students (and all students who have to write papers that need to be easily read and understood) to keep their sentences short and simple, for the good of all mankind, academia and the people who have to edit your papers (whether it be for a book, journal, newspaper, composite paper written by several students for class or a family newsletter) and then break up and reword sentences that run on and on and on, so that they can get the information out as effectively as possible.
Allison Baldwin is a sophomore journalism major and the city editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
