Key Tips to Better Rearrange English Sentences

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to rearrange the sentences in your essay, don’t fret. First, let’s cover the basics and understand what it means to rearrange sentences.

When you rearrange sentences, you change the order of words in the sentence. It could also entail removing or replacing some words. People rearrange sentences for different reasons. This article covers these reasons and tips to rearrange sentences.

Why People Rearrange Sentences

In this part of the article, we attempt to identify the reasons people rearrange the sentences in their essays and articles.

Structural Issues

Structural issues are the most common reason for rearranging sentences. If you notice that your sentences sound awkward, there could be structural issues. This issue could be a simple misuse of a word or a punctuation mark. 

Foregrounding

Foregrounding is a linguistic concept that entails making a part of a sentence stand out. In some instances, writers rearrange sentences to foreground a certain part of the sentence. Take these two sentences as examples:

• The house collapsed gradually
• Gradually, the house collapsed

In the second sentence, the adverb is foregrounded for thematic effect. The foregrounded word shows how the house collapsed. Therefore, the second sentence could be a good answer to any question about how the house collapsed.

Disambiguation

You may rearrange sentences to make them more meaningful. There are instances where the existing structure sounds ambiguous. Rearranging them allows you to make meaningful sentences.

The ultimate aim of any communicative endeavor is to pass information. If you’re unable to do this, you aren’t really communicating. This is why professionals rearrange their sentences when they feel the current structure harms their communicative intent.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism attracts stiff penalties in academia. This is why students and researchers avoid it like the plague. People rearrange their sentences if it appears too similar to others. This simple act helps them avoid getting penalized for plagiarism. 

How to Rearrange the Sentences in Your Essay

Writing an essay or web content means you have at least a basic understanding of the language. You may have to work a bit harder to rearrange your sentences because it can get tricky.

First, you should have a clear goal. Ask yourself why you need to reword your sentences. The answer to this question helps to identify the most suitable approach to use.

A simple sentence voice switch (active to passive and vice versa) is ideal if you’re trying to make your work more original. Since the voice switch changes word order and sentence structure, you should be safe. Note that excessive use of passive sentences makes your work harder to read.

In addition, you can front words as we did in the example above if you’re trying to foreground a particular part of the sentence. This may make the sentence look unusual or sound like Master Yoda. For example:

• In came the boys (“in” is fronted for thematic effect)
• Sitting on the couch was a boy (“sitting on the couch” is fronted)

Substitution is another simple way to rearrange sentences. This method is more common when you’re trying to make your writing clearer and more meaningful. You could find simpler alternatives for difficult words and phrases.

Conclusion

Like most languages, English is a language that follows specific rules. This makes it important to have a good grasp of the rules of the language. The simple steps above could be useful when trying to rearrange sentences.

A faster alternative to these methods is to use AI-powered tools to handle the process. These tools are products of years of extensive research into the intersection of artificial intelligence and writing. INK is one of such tools that you can call on when creating or rewriting any piece of content.