Please read the following two sentences, and consider which is easier to understand:
First sentence: According to “The Streisand Effect,” an article in the November 2023 issue of Vanity Fair by Radhika Jones, “Jackie Onassis, then an editor at Doubleday, invited [Barbra] Streisand to write a memoir. [Streisand] turned the offer down.”
Second sentence: Barbara Streisand turned down an offer to write her memoirs when Jackie Onassis, then an editor at Doubleday, invited her, according to “The Streisand Effect,” an article in the November 2023 issue of Vanity Fair by Radhika Jones.
You chose the second version, I suspect. Why? Ask yourself what is the most important information in that sentence? Is it the name of the article? Is it the name of its author? Is it the name of the magazine where the article appeared? Is it the date of the article’s publication? Is it that Jackie O. asked Streisand to write a memoir and Streisand said no?
The information at the end of the first sentence is the most important information. Yet it appears 23 words into the sentence. Why? Because the sentence is poorly written, that’s why. (I wrote the sentence for this blog, so no one’s feelings are hurt.) The most important information—the subject of a sentence—should go first (with a few exceptions such as in poetry).
Yet inverted sentences like this appear everywhere. I see them in student-written research papers. It’s not the student’s fault. Teachers have probably not taken the time to point out that the findings or conclusions of research are more important to readers than who found them and where they published their results.
To avoid gobbledygook, read over your sentences and ask yourself what the most important information is. Almost always, that goes first.
English Writing Teacher 