So what is the first word in this sentence

One-word Sentences

By Bizhan Romani

English is a beautiful language, and one of its many perks is the one-word sentences. One-word sentences — as the name suggests is a sentence with a single word, and which makes total sense.

One word sentences can be used in different forms. It could be in form of a question such as “Why?” It could be in form of a command such as “Stop!” Furthermore, it could be used as a declarative such as “Me.” Also, a one-word sentence could be used to show location, for example, “here.” It could also be used as nominatives e.g. “David.”

Actually, most of the words in English can be turned into one-word sentences. All that matters is the context in which they are used. In a sentence, there is usually a noun, and a verb. In a one-word sentence, the subject and the action of the sentence is implied in the single word, and this is why to understand one-word sentences, one has to understand the context in which the word is being used.

Saying only a little at all times is a skill most people want to learn; knowing when to use one-word sentences can help tremendously. However, you cannot use one-word sentences all the time so as robotic or come off as rude.

Here are common one-word sentences, and their meanings:

Basically, the 5 Wh-question words — where, when, why, who and what? can also stand as one-word sentences.

“So what?” A simple test for concise, interesting writing

The “so what” test can be a powerful tool for making your scientific writing concise and ensuring that it is interesting to your reader.

Effective writing and editing in the sciences requires concise and convincing language.

There are lots of tips out there for how to do this, ranging from the use of passive versus active verbs or non-jargon-y language to vague advice like “strive to be concise,” though it is hard to give an exact formula for how to do good, convincing writing.

Common advice also centers around grammar rules, which can be difficult for scientists who haven’t recently taken language refreshers and near impossible for the large contingency of non-native English scientists, and advice doesn’t help if you don’t know how to apply it.

To address this, I started applying and teaching the “so what” test.

To apply this test, one just breaks a paper down into paragraphs, sentences, or even clauses or individual words and asks “so what?” Asking this one simple question and thinking deeply about the answer while editing can remove extraneous words, tighten up vague or rambling sentences, and craft arguments that are convincing to your reader.

So, how does this “so what” test work? First, lets look as some questions to ask yourself during the “so what” test, and then we can expand on these with examples so you can see it in action.

Questions to ask yourself during the “so what” test:

Does this sentence add to my paper?

This question is designed to remove vague or unimportant wording from your manuscript.

Does this sentence bring value? An important piece of background information? a result? an interpretation of a result? If not, is it necessary?

This point can also help in structuring your document when used in terms of context – ask yourself if the sentence fits into the manuscript, then section, then paragraph. Maybe this sentence is useful but not in its current location.

What does the reader learn from this sentence? Is this knowledge relevant for understanding my manuscript?

These questions are designed to remove points that are off-topic and therefore distracting to your overall story. If the information you are conveying does not advance your specific story or is not needed to understand your science, it should not be included in your paper, no matter how relevant it seems to the field or current audience. Advance your story, and your story alone, and keep it succinct.

Is the point of this sentence clear, or is it too convoluted and vague?

This point addresses writing style. Can the reader jump right into your sentence and understand what you are trying to say? If you are unsure, read it out loud or copy it into a translation website to have it read out loud to you. How far into the sentence do you have to listen before you understand the point? Can you bring the point of the sentence closer to the front to better grab the reader’s attention?

Also, try to paraphrase it or have someone else paraphrase it for you. In doing this exercise, you might see that a sentence is either totally irrelevant, that it was already stated in different terms somewhere else in the paper, or that it could be drastically reworded to increase the readability.

If I removed this word/phrase/sentence, would the meaning of my manuscript change? OR, how does my manuscript change when I remove this sentence and is that acceptable?

This catches repetitiveness and wordiness. If something can be removed from your manuscript without affecting the meaning, it is irrelevant and you don’t need it. Use this exercise to remove parts that are stated several times in slightly different ways, remove excess/passive wordiness, and ensure all of your writing is focused and relevant to your story.

Is this point understandable for my audience, meaning are the terms and concepts either available to the common base level of knowledge available to my readers or have they been appropriately explained?

This point can catch unexplained concepts that can confuse your reader. Make sure that every term in the sentence you are editing is understandable for the knowledge level of your audience.

All manuscripts should be crafted such that a reader having knowledge of only the lowest level common course that your reading base would have taken would understand everything written. For general audience journals, such as PNAS, one must assume that your reader has had the equivalent of chemistry or biology 101. This means that you won’t need to explain to them what RNA is, but should include a brief clause defining the function of microRNA or siRNA.

So how do we apply this so what test to our own work? Lets look at an example:

“Polymers have been recently applied to enhance therapeutics.”

Even if your paper is about applying polymers to therapeutics, does this sentence add something to your paper or your argument? Not really, because there are no real facts in this sentence, meaning it doesn’t add value, and because the reader is already reading a paper on a polymer that was applied to therapeutics (hopefully this is what this paper is about, or this sentence is REALLY extraneous!), they likely already know this information. If you removed this sentence from a paper on polymers and therapeutics, would the meaning be changed? Likely not.

Looking at some of the individual words here also brings up some issues. What types of polymers? therapeutics? What is meant by “recently”? This month? this year? this decade? How about “applied”? Are these polymers conjugated to therapeutics? Used as nanoparticle carriers?

Overall, sentences like these are common in science, and everyone writes them. They are the first-draft idea sentences that are helpful for “outlining” the overall structure of the paper (its easy to fill in a paragraph after this sentence about the important background of polymers in therapeutics), but they all too often make it to final drafts and bog down the overall text.

Therefore, how do we use the “so what” test on this draft sentence to increase the impact of our writing?

First, we can make it more specific for our paper. What types of polymers are we writing about? How have these specific ones been applied to therapeutics? What do our applied polymers do to enhance therapeutics? Is there a specific mechanism or enhancement that we are focusing on? What is the history behind that and/or what are some existing examples of these polymers or applications?

Second, if this information is in a later and sentence and this was just a lead-up sentence, do we need it? Likely, we can delete it and our paragraph will have the exact same impact. Otherwise, this information can be integrated into a future sentence(s) to keep the flow moving in a way that is more useful to our reader.

Last, how can change our vague words to provide more specifics that can make the writing more interesting for our reader?

As an example, we could write something like:

“In the past 10 years, PEG-based polymers conjugated to fast-clearing therapeutics have been demonstrated to increase the circulation half-life.”

This sentence answers many of the questions that came up in our “so what” test. First of all, we have used adjectives to describe our vague nouns that make the sentence (and therefore the manuscript) much more specific. This can actually improve our readership, and therefore our impact, by appealing very strongly to a small class of readers, which is better than not really appealing at all to a broad class of reader.

Next, we made this sentence mean something. Now the reader is learning exactly what types of polymers do a very specific thing in the field of therapeutics. This will also focus the readers attention to key points we want to highlight (PEG polymers and increasing the half life of therapeutics) instead of a sentence that will cause their mind to drift away.

Obviously this sentence could be changed in a variety of ways depending on what the paper will highlight (stay tuned for a future post on determining your specific audience and writing for them!), though its a great start for making a clearer, higher impact sentence.

Lets look at another example:

“The polymer developed herein showed a better half life and less toxicity to match the desired therapeutic requirements.”

While this sentence is highlighting the results of this study, it is almost too vague to be of use. The reader doesn’t know what “better” means, and likely will be flipping back through the paper to see the result from the polymer as well as the therapeutic requirements.

In fact, words like “better/worse”, “higher/lower”, etc. should never be used without a qualifying number. It MUST always state 4-fold better, 3x higher, etc. This also applies to significance…never state that a results is significant or non significant without listing the p value in the sentence.

Additionally, if there was more than one polymer tested in this study, it should be specified and the therapeutic requirements should be restated. In terms of providing more meaning to the reader, the writer of this sentence should also consider adding a “so what” clause or second sentence. These sentences often start with “meaning/demonstrating/showing/indicating that…” and explicitly state why this is important or matters.

So how could this sentence be changed to pass the “so what” test?

“Polymer-drug conjugate MC121 therefore showed a twenty-fold longer half life than the drug alone (

20 h vs 1 h) with no demonstrated toxicity in mice. This means that it can be a good lead target for the treatment of target disease, which requires a half life of greater than 5 hours to avoid constant infusions.”

But adding all of these extra words makes my manuscript so long, and I am already over the word limit!

Yes, sometimes being more specific can make a sentence longer than the vaguer version of the sentence, but the “so what” test can also be used to shorten a manuscript.

For example, I bet you’ve seen a lot of this type of scientific writing:

“The polymer was applied to the extension of the half life of this drug in order to reach a half life of over 5 hours to avoid the need for constant infusions of the drug.”

By applying the “so what” to this sentence, we find that close to half of the wording in this is superfluous and the sentence is still vague. Phrases like “was applied to” make for convoluted sentences that do not provide much information. Why do we need to say something “was applied to the extension of…” when “extend” will do that in one word, or when “was applied to” could be made much more specific, such as “was conjugated to the free carboxylic acid of…”. Also, the excess wordiness and the passive structuring of the sentence makes it difficult for the reader to understand, as the point of the sentence appears roughly halfway through and is a bit buried in wordiness. If a reader isn’t paying close attention, it is possible they will lose track of what this sentence is trying to say before it gets to the point.

Therefore, the “so what” test is telling us that we should remove excess wordiness and make the point of this sentence stand out better, while adding specifics where possible.

What if we tried:

“To extend the drug half life to greater than 5 hours to avoid constant infusions, we conjugated polymer 121 to the free carboxylic acid of MC.”

Or, to make a completely different and yet still more readable sentence:

“We hypothesized that conjugating various polymers (1, 2, or 5 kDa) to MC could provide a conjugate with a half life of greater than 5 hours to avoid the need for constant infusions.”

This application of the “so what” test is great for shortening and tightening up sentences, but when the entire document is too long, sometimes more drastic measures are needed.

In these cases, compose your next draft using an “additive so what” test.

For this version, start with a blank document, copying in one sentence at a time. To each sentence that is copied into your new draft, apply the so what test again, but only copy in those sentences that pass.

In this situation, instead of asking “what is unimportant enough to remove?”, ask “what is important enough to keep?”

The mindset shift here seems subtle, but it makes a huge impact on tightening up writing. Each sentence therefore needs to prove its worth to make it to the final cut, which is more difficult/strict than a sentence needing to be not exactly superfluous.

Over time, the “so what” test becomes ingrained into your writing and doesn’t need to always be an extra step. It will eventually be easier to spot the vague or unimportant phrases while writing and correct them on the spot.

Oh hey – that sounds like just like becoming a better scientific writer!

If you still want a bit more help, though – you can always check out our workshops on writing scientific manuscripts!

PS. We’d love to see your best examples of sentences that didn’t pass your “so what” test and what you did to fix them! Post your examples in the comments…

Inversion and question tags (Exercises)

1 Underline the most suitable words in each sentence.

2 Rewrite each sentence so that it begins with the word or words in italics.

…. Now is the best time tobuy a house.

2 The bus came round the corner.

3 The price of petrol went up.

4 The Parthenon stands on the top of the Acropolis.

5 The wheels of the engine went round and round.

6 Winston Churchill lived in this house.

7 The flag went down.

8 The best part of the story comes now.

9 The protesters came along the road.

10 The first day of the rest of your life is today.

3 Add suitable question tags. (Do not use positive tags for positive statements.)

4 Harry was working in Bristol then.

Asking for advice

D Under no circumstances

5 Rewrite each sentence, beginning as shown. Do not change the meaning.

1 Tony was not only late, but he had left all his books behind.

Not only. ..was Tony late but he had left all his books behind.

2 I had no sooner gone to bed than someone rang my doorbell.

3 I have seldom stayed in a worse hotel.

4 I have never heard such nonsense!

5 I realized only then that I had lost my keys.

6 The economic situation has rarely been worse.

7 The manager not once offered us an apology.

8 You should not send money to us by post under any circumstances.

Under no circumstances.

9 I understood Hamlet only after seeing it on the stage.

Only after seeing Hamlet.

10 The embassy staff little realized that Ted was a secret agent.

1 1 shall we. 2 should you. 3 has be. 4 will you. 5 are you. 6 will you. 7 can he. 8 haven’t you. 9 didn’t they. 10 is he.

2 1 Now is the best time to buy a house. 2 Round the corner came the bus. 3 Up went the price of petrol. 4 On the top of the Acropolis stands the Parthenon. 5 Round and round went the wheels of the engine. 6 In this house lived Winston Churchill. 7 Down went the flag. 8 Now comes the best part of the story. 9 Along the road came the protesters.10 Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

3 1 will you. 2 isn’t he. 3 won’t you. 4 wasn’t he. 5 do they. 6 do you. 7 does it. 8 shall we. 9 are you. 10 doesn’t he.

4 1 C. 2 A. 3 D. 4 A. 5 B. 6 C. 7 D. 8 B. 9 C. 10 A. 11 A. 12 C. 13 C. 14 D. 15 D.

5 1 Not only was Tony late, but he had left all his books behind. 2 No sooner had I gone to bed than someone rang my doorbell. 3 Seldom have I stayed in a worse hotel. 4 Never have I heard such nonsense. 5 Only then did I realize that I had lost my keys. 6 Rarely has the economic situation been worse. 7 Not once did the manager offer us an apology. 8 Under no circumstances should you send money to us by post. 9 Only after seeing Hamlet on the stage did I understand it. 10 Little did the embassy staff realize that Ted was a secret agent.

So what is the first word in this sentence

Ответ:

1. Fill in the missing word. There are three answers you do not need to use.

1. You need lots of TECHNICAL equipment to go scuba diving.

3. Rock climbing is a very PHYSICAL activity.

4. Football is a very popular WHIZZED sport.

5. I think zorbing is a BIZZARE activity.

6. Underwater hockey ORIGINATED in Britain where it was invented by a diving club.

7. There were around 50,000 ENTRANTS and I came 100th, so I was proud.

8. The boys spent the afternoon in the pool playing with their INFLATABLE ball.

9. Ben KNOCKED down the hill on his snowboard.

10. The OPPOSING team scored three goals in thirty minutes and won the match.

2. Complete the sentences using the Conditional (Type 0,1,2 or 3).

1. If I had known it was a secret, I wouldn’t have told (not/tell) anyone.

2. If I were you, I’d stop smoking.

3. If you put water in the freezer, it becomes ice.

4. If they play well, they would win the match.

5. If I earn more money, I would buy my parents a really big house!

6. Water boils if you heat it to 100 C.

7. We would have gone to the park if it hadn’t rained.

8. If you invite Mike, I will not come with you.

9. If I had more time, I would have taken karate lessons.

10. If you do not water the plants, they die.

3. Match to form compound adjectives

1.old a. looking- old-fashioned

2.kind b. built- kind- hearted

3. good c. hearted- good- looking

5. newly e. fashioned- newly- built

4. Fill in the correct pre»Times New Roman, serif»>for, in.

1. I am totally in favor of contact sports.

2. These golf clubs are in excellent condition.

3. Are there bikes to hire in this city?

4. Andriy Shevchenko fit to play Manchester Rivals for the title!

5. Fill in: to, up, off, after.

1. Take __OFF__your jacket and put it in the washing machine.

2. Clara is very smart. I think she takes ___AFTER_ her dad.

3. My new hobby takes ___UP_ most of my free time.

4. Since you have so much time, why do not you take __UP_ football.

English Homework (3/1-5)

Grammar

a. Complete the sentences with one word.

1. What were you and Sarah talking about?
2. You didn’t like the film, did you?
3. My father loves opera, and so does my mother.
4. A I’ve been to India twice.
B Have you? I’d love to go?
5. What have you been doing since I last saw you?

b. Circle the correct answer, a, b, or c.

1. Could you tell me what time the bus leaves?
2. How many people usually come to this class?
3. I’ve read at least three books so far this month.
4. That was the best film I’ve ever seen!
5. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll finish.

Vocabulary

a. Word groups. Underline the word that is different. Say why.

1 vain stubborn possessive wise
2. cheerful loyal insincere conscientious
3. flu blister cold asthma
4. GP A&E specialist doctor

b. Complete the sentences with a preposition.

1 Who were you talking to on the phone?
2. She’s very good at listening to people.
3. Sam is a real pain in the neck.
4. She’s allergic to milk.
5. What are you waiting for?

c. Complete the sentences with an adjective made from the word in bold.

1. Damien is very forgetful. He never remembers our anniversary.
2. I’m ambitious – I want to go far in my profession.
3. My brother is very reliable. I can always depend on him for anything.
4. Luke is very moody – happy one moment and sad the next.
5. Madeleine is very sensitive. It’s very easy to hurt her feelings.

d. Write words for the definitions.

1. bleed – when blood comes out of, for example, your finger
2. swollen – bigger than normal, especially because of an injury or infection
3. bandage – a piece of cloth used to tie round a part of the body that has been hurt
4. bad-tempered – (a person who) gets angry very easily
5. bossy – (a person who is) always telling other people what to do
6. arrogant – (a person who) thinks he/she is superior to other people

Pronunciation

a. Underline the word with a different sound.

1. cheerful headache choking stitches
2. sociable unconscious pressure bossy
3. funny impulsive blood flu
4. cough open swollen throat
5. heart calm earache arm

b. Underline the stressed syllable.

arrogant immature injection allergic specialist