Sentence of the Week #13

[From Michelle Yeoman and Barbara Gastel:]

Editing Solution: Last Week’s Sentence

Welcome to the 13th installment in this series. As a reminder, below is Sentence of the Week #12:

The results of study suggest that vitamin D supplements can improve health.

This sentence needs a word before the noun study to provide context. This word can be an article (such as a or the), a demonstrative pronoun (such as this), or a possessive pronoun (such as our). Thus, one version of the corrected sentence is as follows:

The results of this study suggest that vitamin D supplements can improve health.

Articles, demonstrative pronouns, and possessive pronouns provide context for nouns. In English, nouns commonly must be preceded by them. Such a word can indicate, for example, that the study

• is the one specified (“this study”),
• hasn’t yet been specified (“a study”),
• is the only one being discussed (“the study”), or
• was conducted by the authors of the sentence (“our study”).

Thus, any of several words (including a, the, this, and our) would be appropriate in our editing example. The most appropriate choice would depend on the context.

We hope that you find this series useful!

Sentence of the Week #13:

The sentence below has 1 definite error:

Unfortunately, their data does not support their conclusions.

Please correct the error, and submit the corrected sentence and any remarks as a comment on this post. I plan to post and discuss the solution next week.

Do you have a sentence that you would like us to consider using as the Sentence of the Week? Please e-mail submissions to Michelle at msyeoman@gmail.com with the subject line “Sentence of the Week”. Submissions should be your own work—don’t nominate a colleague’s writing :). 

Please also feel free to e-mail suggestions relating to this series.