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Coordination

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In academic texts your sentences will often be rather long and complex as a result of coordinated clauses and phrases, sometimes quite long themselves, using and, or and but. When you coordinate expressions, you should make sure that it is clear what exactly is being coordinated, in other words what belongs with what. This can really help to make a sentence easy to process and often guarantees good rhythm. Here is an example:

(1) A link between Britain and the continent would be of great value for the development of transport and create employment.

On first reading, one might well expect the final and to signal a coordination with the development of transport. However, the use of the verb create shows that the coordination is between be of great value for the development of transport and create employment. This is best brought out by repeating would, which also improves the rhythm of the sentence:

(1a) A link between Britain and the continent would be of great value for the development of transport and would create employment.

Here is another example:

(2) It is impossible to understand the whole system and its many interrelationships as it is gradually becoming more complex, or predict exactly what it will come across while it is operating in a particular environment under particular conditions.

This sentence is by no means wrong, but there is quite a distance between impossible to understand and predict. Predict clearly 'belongs to' impossible to, so you can make the sentence easier to process by repeating to:

(2a) It is impossible to understand the whole system and its many interrelationships as it is gradually becoming more complex, or to predict exactly what it will come across while it is operating in a particular environment under particular conditions.

A basic tip when coordinating phrases is to repeat the whole or part of the element earlier in the sentence that the coordinated phrase belongs to. And the longer the distance to that element, the more of it you should consider repeating.

Finally, have a look at this case:

(3) It would be useful if the researcher could take some photos during the presentation, and perhaps a short video as well.

Here, the writer has not taken into account that the verb take only collocates with photos and not with video. In other words, the coordinated phrase is too restricted. This can easily be resolved:

(3a) It would be useful if the researcher could take some photos during the presentation, and perhaps make [or even could make] a short video as well.