These "locally ambiguous" sentences - or at least, the worst examples of them - are called garden path sentences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence ….
Minor secret of good writing: be locally unambiguous. Instead of "if you skip doing what you like to follow that path," write "if you skip doing what you like in order to follow that path," even though it's longer. Otherwise "what you like to follow" seems a phrase at first.
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Yeah there’s some garden-pathiness in the example sentence. Your brain probably notices a possible parse like “If you skip doing what you like to follow that path *toward*, ...” Even if it doesn’t fully invest and then have to backtrack, it creates mental noise.
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Yes! Often a natural way to break up these false phrases is to throw a comma in there. That probably accounts for a big percentage of the commas in my writing.
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In this particular example, "in order to" is much better. But you can see how in a lot of similar situations, adding a comma after "like" would do the job.
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It’s also a major secret of good coding to be locally unambiguous. The well-known importance of naming variables is a special case.
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I remember an early essay, where you wrote (paraphrasing): “use the simplest words possible that accurately convey the message.” Simple advice that has stuck with me.
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That looks counter-intuitive. I certainly notice myself cutting out as many words as possible all the time. I'm sure you know more of such tiny secrets: please share! Thank you!
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I would love to read an essay (or a book) on your tips/best practices for essay writing.
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@GuyKawasaki , in his book: wise guy recommends Brenda Ueland's Chicago manual style of writing. Not sure if it's meant for essays specifically. Hope this helps - Show replies
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Great point, especially when talking about several people. Strategic use of names instead of pronouns is an underappreciated skill
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