Apply Sant s Law to Every Sentence

Apply Sant's Law to Every Sentence

What is Sant's Law? Well, in all modesty, it's the most important breakthrough in writing clear, direct prose since the invention of the simple sentence. Okay, maybe I'm not being all that modest. Or all that honest, either. But it is a technique that can help you identify whether your sentences are well constructed. And it's pretty easy to use.

Here it is in a nutshell: To write a clear, direct sentence, make sure the key idea is embedded in the heart of the sentence.

What's the heart of the sentence? It's the subject, the verb, and the complement—usually the direct object or indirect object.

That's the first step and, to apply Sant's Law, the only step you have to take. All that matters is this: Does the subject/verb/complement communicate the key idea?

Perhaps you'll run across a sentence like this in one of your proposals:

It would appear that enhanced access to the database on the part of our key executives is desirable.

Can you even find the subject and verb in that thing? Well, the grammatical subject is "It" and the verb is "would appear." Not too exciting, is it? Not very clear either.

Try to rewrite the sentence so that the key ideas are in the key grammatical slots. Something like this would work:

Our key executives need better access to the database.

If you apply Sant's Law, what do you get? The subject is "executives," the verb is "need," and the complement is "access."

Executives need access ...

Is that the key idea? I think so.