Adjective clauses? Don\'t let your eyes glaze over--this will be short and fun.

Question

Adjective clauses? Don't let your eyes glaze over--this will be short and fun.  An adjective clause is just a group of words with a subject and a verb that provide a description. They can be useful--and they can get out of hand.

Adjective clauses can eliminate wordiness when used to combine two short sentences: "The tornado was extremely powerful. It hit Minnesota." This feels choppy and it uses up two sentences for too-little content right? So, it becomes "The tornado that hit Minnesota was extremely powerful." (Adjective clause in bold!)

However, adjective clauses can also create wordiness in sentences. Would you say "she wore a dress which was made of red sequins"? No? (Probably not even "dress of red sequins," which just includes an adjective phrase). "Red sequined dress"? Now we're talking.

What about "the boss read reports of your progress"? " I took a test of student aptitude"? How could you shorten these sentences?

Note that when we place multiple modifiers before a noun, we may be creating a compound modifier (also known as a phrasal adjective). In these situations, the modifiers work in combination and must be hyphenated. Let's say you wanted to refer to a device used to find lead in drinking water, "a detector of heavy metals." Upon revision, this phrase would become "a heavy-metal detector." On the other hand, if we simply wanted to suggest that an all-purpose metal detector was a heavy device, we would say "heavy metal detector," without the hyphen. The meanings are different. Check out this link for more on when to hyphenate compound modifiers.

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For your main post, you will rewrite three sentences.  Eliminating wordiness (and achieving conciseness) is not just about making things shorter, but about tightening without losing or distorting meaning.  For each sentence, try to get the sentence as short and direct as possible without losing any context or meaning. Also, give us word counts. How many words in the original sentence, and how many did you get it down to?

1) "My favorite ice cream shop, which is on the coast, serves huckleberry ice cream."

2) "The clown, who was at the end of the line, was riding a red tricycle."

3) "Parents who are not custodial may still maintain regular contact with their children after divorce if they have been granted visitation rights which were ordered by a court of law."

Explanation / Answer

1.On the coast my favourite ice cream shop serves huckleberry ice cream.

Original sentence- 14 words

Rewriting sentence - 12 words.

2. At the end of the line the clown was riding a red tricycle.

Original,sentence- 15 words

Rewriting sentence- 13 words.

3. If the non-custodial parents have been granted visitation rights by a court of law, they can maintain regular contacts with their children after divorce.

Original sentence- 30 words

Rewriting sentence - 24 words.

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