In my last blog post, I spoke about the perils of overloading sentences – trying to cram in too many facts so the point you’re making is unclear. Often this is due to shoehorning in information that is utterly unrelated – what we call a non sequitur (literally “it does not follow” in Latin).
Here are a couple of examples:
- “Writing well doesn’t come naturally to everyone and, increasingly, successful organisations are looking for potentially profitable niche business areas.”
- “The copywriting award was won by Melanie Silver who regularly goes swimming.”
You may well ask, what does a leisure pursuit have to do with winning a copywriting award? The answer is nothing – it’s an attempt to join the unjoinable, a non sequitur.
The standard rules of good writing apply: if it’s irrelevant, leave it out!
