The house that Jack built: Too many restrictive clauses
I’ll always remember the children’s story, The House that Jack Built, which has such a simple premise: Start with a sentence that includes a restrictive clause, and then turn that sentence into a restrictive clause (those are the ones that begin with that) and tack it onto another sentence.
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the mouse that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
And so on. (You’re probably reciting the next line now; the pattern is so memorable.) It makes a great story for children because of the natural meter that arises from the structure.
It’s not so good when you begin to find this structure appearing in your own writing (unless you’re writing a children’s book.) I recently edited a software manual that included this phrase:
Notifications are message templates that contain the text that will appear in the e-mail messages that documents are attached to.
Three restrictive clauses in one sentence. I can live with two, but three just seems a bit much. And it would be simple to get rid of one of those restrictive clauses.
Notifications are message templates; they contain the text that will appear in the e-mail messages that documents are attached to.
With all three restrictive clauses, there was no natural break, no place for the reader to pause and let the information soak in. By the time we get to the end, we’re quite out of breath, and have likely lost track of exactly what’s being described here. Adding the semicolon gives us a place to stop momentarily. We read that first phrase and absorb the fact that these notification thingies are templates. Then we move along to the fuller definition.
Look for strings of restrictive clauses—remember, they begin with that and add essential information to the sentence—and think about ways to rewrite the sentence, or perhaps break it into two sentences.
Roy Jacobsen
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