Success in writing any type of formal correspondence for either business or for the general public depends on the ability to write clear-cut, effective sentences. Without this ability you fail to achieve the primary purpose of a message—i.e., to convey your thoughts in a manner that the reader easily understands them.
The sentence is the basic unit of expression. Whenever we need to convey a thought to another person, we use the sentence. We cannot so much as e-mail a customer or correspond with our boss without forming a sentence in our minds.
Failure to decide in your mind precisely what you want to say, or failure to determine how you want to say it, results in sentences that convey blurred and weak thoughts.
You can improve your ability to write effective sentences by studying and reviewing the important principles of sentence structure in this book. Follow our advice and review our many examples. By the time you have finished our book, you will notice an immediate improvement in how you construct, review and revise sentences.