by Jennie Ruby
If there is one sentence style that characterizes scientific and technical writing, it is the compound sentence with a transition word. Once when reviewing a young friend's 10th grade essay, I noted her impressive correct usage and punctuation of this sentence structure. She said, "Yes, I know. Those sentences are my secret weapon. I use at least one in every essay. Teachers love them!"
The beauty of compound sentences is that they allow complex and closely related ideas to be combined into one large sentence. Let's look at some examples. What you are going to see is two sentences separated by a semi-colon. The second sentence will begin with a transition word followed by a comma:
- QuarkXPress was for many years the standard software for design work; however, In-Design usurped that position several years ago.
- Relative cell addresses are the default in most Excel formulas; however, absolute addresses provide the ability to create formulas that do not change relative to their location in the spreadsheet.
- The equation would not fit on one line; therefore, the designer displayed it in a box at the bottom of the page.
When combining ideas, be sure to consider using this "secret weapon."
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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
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Join Jennie in our online classes (she'll be teaching two upcoming classes for IconLogic): Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts and Editing with Microsoft Word 2007.