A refresher on pacing, punctuation and parenthesis
Mind these five flawed examples to help tighten and brighten your prose.
When a sentence includes a form of parenthesis—a word, phrase or clause framed by a pair of commas, dashes, or parentheses—writers must take care that the statement surrounding the interjection is structurally valid.
If the optional parenthesis is omitted, the remaining wording must still be coherent, and thus the parenthesis makes sense grammatically. To test whether the sentence’s composition is complete, temporarily omit the interjection, then repair any syntactical and grammatical issues that manifest themselves before reinstating (or restating) the parenthesis.
The following sentences are flawed in construction, and the discussion and revision that follows each resolves the problem.
1. He is considered to be one of, if not the, deadliest assassin in the empire.
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