Revising With Williams

Eastern Michigan University is open to students who have the potential to succeed academically as determined by a review of official high school records and/or college records. Admission to the University is based on a combination of factors including, but not limited to, the review of high school or college grade point average, high school or college curriculum and scores on standardized tests.

Students having the proven academic potential to succeed are welcome to attend Eastern Michigan University. This potential is determined by a review of official high school and/or college records. This review determines admission based on, but not limited to, the following factors: high school or college grade point average, high school or college curriculum, and scores on standardized tests.

The first paragraph is from the EMU catalog page, The Undergraduate Experience-Admissions. The second paragraph is my revision of the original. The first problem I addressed in the EMU paragraph was with clarity. In the first sentence, it took me a couple of reads to figure out that the students were the subjects of the sentence. By moving them to the front of the sentence and making the subjects of the verb “attend” involved in the action, the purpose of the sentence is immediately clearer. Joseph Williams suggests this in his book, Style (Williams 43).

The next problem I addressed was the cohesion between sentences. The EMU paragraph was made up of two very long sentences that did not flow together well. I broke up the sentences to make shorter, clearer sentences that flowed from one to the other using words from the previous sentence.