Word Choice Exercise: Sentences to Revise
Writers need to be careful to use words correctly to avoid embarrasing or confusing sentences. Revise the sentences below to correct the problems with word choice. (DO 20)
1. Injuries often prove fatal to the horse and some never recover.
2. So what is a young mother supposed to do? This is a decision she should think about while she is getting married.
3. His thoughts can be summed up in a few words but they are not so easily explained.
4. She lived in a house with her elder mother.
5. The average person would have no, little or any opinion.
6. The principle character discovers that the water supply in his town is deluded.
7. Most of the divorces filed for have girls connected with them in one way or another.
8. If a colored person is slayed in South Africa, he or she is given a fair trial.
9. I would hate to loose the power of prayer.
10. Gerasim was a deaf mute who could speak only inaudible syllables.
11. I have a good code of ethics because I went to a military school in Virginia.
12. A child should get his background at an early age so his mother should go to college.
13. Even though the three articles were the same, I found no differences.
14. I think a scientist should have morals but shouldn't let them interfere with his work.
15. Several collegiate professors have been either dismissed from the faculty or heavily reprimanded for actions doubting the loyalty of one's country.
16. Movies have been made of the lives of such great men as Lincoln, Washington, Hitler, and Babe Ruth.
17. Farmers are more religious than city people because they go to church and pray for rain.
18. A love of nature was shown by the hunt in which Siegfried killed more animals and also brought back a huge bear just for laughs.
19. The merchants are beginning to build our small community up. We have a new funeral home....
20. The future is nearer than the past, so I will start by saying I am twenty years old.
21. Caesar was very tactile in his relations with Cleopatra and his soldiers.
22. I like to keep an open mine about labor unions.
23. He wrote about the slavery of the collard people of the South.
24. Living for over two hundred years would get old.
25. After all, foulable man was responsible for the Bible.
26. I can't think of anything which being totally ignorant of which would benefit the person ignorant of it.
27. The candidate proposed a full parody program for farmers.
28. I heard a speaker talk about marriage once, and he said it was similar to eating the desert before a meal.
29. When two people have said wedding vowels they are joined together.
30. The girl, an unwed mother, hasn't a chance because of her lowly environment and her abdominal husband.
31. This paper contains no dramatical errors.
32. Misused high-flung words can be very embarrassing to the writer.
33. Sam Rosenberg, the fighting Irishman as he calls himself, was his name.
34. The love of a man for a woman is always taken for granite.
35. Athletes have been considered by many as being passed by their professors so they could continue to play their peculiar sport.
36. Scientists have now developed an atomic clock that has proven many chronological facts thought to be right wrong.
37. So how could a democracy work perfectly when none of them will not follow any or almost none of the rules of an ideal democracy?
38. To this one dramatic major I will give the anonymous name of Jane Doe.
39. (In about 2000AD) the courts will be full of cases like your husband or your wife winking at someone or riding them home from work.
40. My wife kicked my ankle, and spontaneously I let out a shrieking ovation whereupon she dropped the eggs into my lap.
41. Can you imagine a more beautiful picture than to see a person setting under a spreading Chestnut tree with the green meadows rolling out before him while he sets completely enveloped in the flowing versus of some beautiful poet?
42. A chance occurrence made by eye-confusing lights, a yearning deep within his childish heart, one night combined and set as rock, ambition in my heart, and, too, a mode to reach that illustratory goal.
43. Life is a merciless maelstrom of logic whirling to a futile purpose.
44. The time drew nigh when I could proudly cut the apron strings, heroically carry out both suitcases, and haughtily walk away to disappear into the great beyond.