From today’s Washington Post :
Jacob Chansley, whose brightly painted face, tattooed torso and horned cap became a visual icon of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison by a federal judge in Washington. His lawyer had asked the judge to impose a sentence of time already served, basically the entire 10 months since the insurrection, during which Chansley attracted more attention for demanding an organic diet while in jail and giving an interview to “60 Minutes.”~ “A visual icon”: It’s not the parts that are an icon; it’s the whole, and here, “visual” is clearly implied. The judge got it right: “He made himself the image of the riot” (my emphasis).
~ “Wednesday to,” &c.: The sequence of elements here could be improved, with the most important element falling at the end of the sentence. That change will also break up the chain of four prepositional phrases.
~ “His lawyer”: Whose? Obviously, that’s Chansley’s lawyer, but it wouldn’t hurt to bring the name in.
~ “Basically the entire”: That phrasing is basically slack.
~ “For”: I’d say that he attracted attention by doing those things.
~ “While in jail”: the sentence has already established the location.
Better:
Jacob Chansley, whose brightly painted face, tattooed torso and horned cap made him an icon of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced by a federal judge in Washington Wednesday to 41 months in prison. Chansley’s lawyer had asked the judge to impose a sentence of time already served — the 10 months since the insurrection — during which Chansley attracted more attention by demanding an organic diet and giving an interview to “60 Minutes.”All I planned to write about when I started: “a visual icon.” As usual, looking closely at one detail led me to notice others.
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)
[I’d add a serial comma (“torso, and horned cap”), italicize “60 Minutes,” and write out January, forty-one, and ten, but it’s not my newspaper. This post is no. 97 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]
comments: 3
I don't know if the writing has gotten worse or the articles are not being edited like they should be!
But a question. This is how I would have re-written the first sentence: "Jacob Chansley, whose brightly painted face, tattooed torso and horned cap made him an icon of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced to 41 months in prison."
Or are we still trying to follow the who, what, when and where in the first sentence.
I was curious as to why "federal" and "Washington" were needed in the first sentence.
Kirsten
It sounds to me like something is missing without “on Wednesday” (or “today”). But yes, the other elements could come in later.
I’ll have to watch more for that everything-in-one-sentence start. I have noticed it in New York Times obituaries. Here’s one from an “How to improve writing” post: “Robert R. Taylor, a serial entrepreneur who popularized hand soap from a pump, gambling $12 million to prevent competitors from duplicating it, and fragrances like “Obsession,” which he advertised with artful eroticism, died on Aug. 29 in Newport Beach, Calif.” Good grief!
Oops — “a ‘How to improve writing’ post.” I missed the an when I deleted the unneeded word earlier.
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