<p>Sorry to crash your forum; I need some quick help. My scholarship application calls for a 250 words essay about what makes an outstanding leader. After asking my mother to read it, I have a dilemma: she thinks that one of the sentences is too complicated to follow. My reply was that she has read too many technical manuals related to her work and not enough creative prose...of course, I could not muster a retort that concise on the spot :D</p>
<p>Would any of you have a quick moment to give me an outside opinion? PM me if you are able to help. Thanks!!</p>
<p>In my opinion, and it is very possibly wrong, and I have not that much experience in life, it seems to me that unless you're a poet and writing for pure aesthetic quality, it's best to be clear. That doesn't mean removing poetic quality from you sentences, but to perhaps re-write it in such a way, and it may just be a period or comma(or one less, as I need to do often. See above sentence for why :) ) but the purpose of writing is to be understood, and often times the beauty of writing can be diminished by unintelligibility. </p>
<p>I don't mean this to criticize, as I am a teenager and don't want to make it seem like my statements are factual(why I didn't ask for the piece at all,) or even relevant to your case necessarily, but as a general principle. If people can't understand what is going on, revise it(happened to me multiple times, the sentence made sense but when I asked my parents to read it to make sure it was ok, they got hung up on it. </p>
<p>I didn't change the nature of my writing, and I think that if you butchered your style to fix something you'd be doing yourself a great disservice. But if you can fix something to make it more easily understood, and keep your tone and rhythm, then it is probably(but not necessarily!) a good thing.</p>
<p>Good luck on your scholarship! Well unless we're competing with each other... :)</p>
<p>When I edit (and I have edited three different corporate newsletters over the years) I try very hard to not mess with style or voice. If the sentence is not clear, or poorly punctuated, or messy, then it needs to be fixed. If it's merely a style issue, it's YOUR essay, not your mom's.</p>
<p>If you need a compromise, try re-writing it completely - using neither your original, nor your mom's fix. But you have the final word on what to use.</p>
<p>Get a third person to read your paper. Maybe your sentence is clear, or maybe your mom's right and it's not clear. Generally, if someone needs to read a sentence more than once to understand it, you should change it. This is a short admissions essay, so the reader isn't going to want to struggle to understand the meaning hidden under a flowery but confusing sentence.</p>
<p>ditto.
agree with corranged.
but if you want to send me the sentence, i will read and comment.
i've taught ap language and comp, among other things.</p>