Sentence structure carries your heavy luggage. If you phrase your good ideas well, your reader hands the bags to the bellhop who takes them to the room, opens the drapes, points out the minibar, and makes the room instantly comprehensible to your guest. If your sentences are vague or confusing, your reader lugs the bags up the service stairs and finds that the card key doesn’t match the door to the room.

The most common impediment to understanding is the failure to identify clearly Who is doing What to Whom in your sentences. Empty phrases that sound like communication more often fail to convey anything at all. They include:

—There is / There are
—It is
—This means / That means / That is
—By . . . it

The Reader Carries Her Bags

There is mounting concern about the recent Ebola outbreak, as there should be. There is much more the government could be doing than it is currently proposing to do. The president proposes conducting more efficient screenings for the disease in the United States, when really there should be equal concern on taking care of other countries affected.

There is a temple on Staten Island who has decided to make Liberia a main concern of theirs. There are many members of the temple that have family there who are suffering from this awful disease. They are trying to come up with the money to send an ambulance over seas. This would not only be helpful to their family members in need, but to the US as well.

By sending help to the countries where Ebola has already been spread, it will prevent the expansion over to America. It will be most effective to treat this disease at its source. If that is done then Americans will not have to worry about it traveling across seas and then can just be concerned with their own people.

Ah, Service!

Americans are increasingly and correctly concerned that our government is not doing enough to protect us from the growing Ebola outbreak. The president’s proposal to conduct more efficient screenings for Ebola in the United States ignores the need to eradicate the disease where it originates.

A temple on Staten Island has adopted Liberia as its main concern. a main concern of theirs. The many members with family in Liberia suffering from the awful disease are raising money to send an ambulance to their homeland. Any success they achieve in helping their family members will benefit the US as well.

Stemming the epidemic in countries where Ebola has already taken hold by combating the disease at its source will prevent the expansion to America. Once the epidemic is contained, we can concentrate our effort of reacting to the few stray cases that have sneaked through our defenses.