Words to Edit By
Word order (syntax) matters—a lot—to crafting logical sentences in English. Proximity matters, too: try to keep (groups of) words positioned as close as logic permits to other (groups of) words they’re supposed to modify.
A Realist Take
Cut away the fluff and basic, logical sentence order in English boils down to subject–verb–indirect object (if any)–direct object (if any). Everything else in a clause—prepositional phrases, adjectives, adverbs, and so on—is modifying those elements.
English isn’t one of those languages with a zillion different cases and just as many forms of each word. In such languages, technically, you could scramble a sentence and still make clear sense of it. In English, get creative with word order at your peril.
There are exceptions to SVO (subject–verb–object) syntax, like putting the verb first to form an interrogative sentence (ask a question), yet these exceptions only prove the rule: changing the order can change the logical meaning. Flipping subjects and verbs may make your sentence sound a little old-fashioned, simply awkward, or outright baffling. You probably don’t want readers scratching their heads and wondering why your declarative sentence (statement) doesn’t end in a question mark.
It’s a corollary of the “word order matters” rule that for modifiers,1 proximity (closeness or distance relative to other words or groups of words) matters. Location, location, location. Stick an appositive phrase2 in the wrong spot and you may find you’ve described the Round Table, instead of Arthur, as a just and courageous king of the Britons.
That said, there are often more ways than one to organize a sentence logically. There are always incorrect alternatives, to be sure, and sometimes a gamut of better and worse ways to order your words.
For Instance
I’ll turn to a fictional character, Egwae from my Dustsong novel and other stories, for examples of peculiar syntax. Egwae is an angel who speaks English (or rather, a tongue represented in the story by English) as a second language.
Example 1
“Leave this place we must.”
Here we have: main verb > direct object > subject > helping verb. Though not difficult to comprehend, the line comes across slightly awkward, like Yoda, or old-fashioned, like a character in a medieval romance.
Example 2
“Egwae am I called, and alive shall I keep you.”
The character’s meaning here is still clear, but it sounds stranger than the last—more jumbled, albeit in a singsong and rhythmic way. Not only are the subjects and verbs flipped, but each clause also starts with a different part of speech altogether: Egwae, restating the subject I, and alive, describing the object you.
Example 3
“You are exiled, but my company have you, as a gift.”
The first clause (You are exiled) is passive voice but otherwise run-of-the-mill. But the main thrust of the second clause, my company have you, is Yoda-weird: direct object > verb > subject. It sounds like the beginning of a question: have you—what, exactly?
I made a deliberate choice to make this character speak with odd syntax, but lines like this gave me pause. It’s hard to read and sounds like a question. Ultimately, though, that’s the point. Egwae is supposed to sound weird to the main character, Len. Even so, it’s arguable whether my intended effect is worth alienating those readers who struggle to make logical sense of her dialogue.
Related Editing Guidelines & Tips
[Specific guideline and tip articles will be listed here as they’re published.]
Godspeed and happy rewriting!
Modifiers, here, means individual words, multiple-word phrases, or entire clauses whose purpose is to modify the meaning of other sentence elements.
An appositive phrase is a descriptive phrase that acts as a restatement of another part of the sentence, like a subject or object.