Re. Karen's sentence structure query

Subject: Re. Karen's sentence structure query
From: Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 09:05:19 LCL

Karen Mayer asked whether to place the context up front in an
instructional sentence, or at the end, after the action. As always,
Karen, it depends:

1. Since context should always precede elaboration, the context should
generally come at the beginning of the sentence. Thus, "to perform A,
do B". Note that this greatly facilitates skimming too: readers need
only read the first three words (in this example) to determine whether
they should continue reading or skip to the next line. Think of this
as the sentence equivalent of a heading; indeed, for some processes,
you can use the context as the heading for a series of short steps,
none of which need include the context since it's right there at the
beginning in the heading.

2. However, advocates of metadiscourse would immediately point out
that sometimes context must come at the end of the sentence to build a
bridge with the following sentence and to alert readers to the
consequences of their actions. Thus, "To perform A, do B; this will
take you to the C screen. To do D (in the C screen), ...." Note that
this serves another important function: if readers don't hit the C
screen after this step, they know something's wrong; if they do reach
the screen, they know they've succeeded at this step.

3. If the context is a warning that will prevent injury or data loss,
then the context _must_ come first, since some people (myself being
one all too often) immediately perform the instruction without reading
the context at the end of the sentence. Thus: "To avoid electrocution
while attaching the component, make sure the power is off." The "e"
word will certainly focus attention on the hazard, then introducing
the context (attaching) provides additional context. You could argue
that "make sure that the power is off" could come first, but some
readers will ignore this command, rationalising that they can probably
skip this step (particularly if the step is more complicated or
inconvenient than simply switching off the power). Thus, put the
warning first.

So the short answer becomes: "you'll have to examine an instruction to
see which of these three cases applies". There aren't any absolute
rules in writing, only really good guidelines based on how people
read. In general, the context should come first, but there will be
exceptions.

--Geoff Hart #8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of
our reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.


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