How to improve writing (no. 132)

A sound principle of good writing: put all scandalous acts in parallel form. Here’s a sentence in need of such improvement, from the daily newsletter of The Atlantic . The subject is Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the now-fired secretary of labor:

Among the allegations against the secretary were claims that she was having the department pay for personal trips, drinking on the job, taking staffers to strip clubs, and in a romantic relationship with a bodyguard, who was also placed on leave this past winter.

(If you’re wondering about also : an earlier sentence notes that two other staff members were placed on leave this past winter.)

The sentence is better with a fourth present participle (-ing ):

Among the allegations against the secretary were claims that she was having the department pay for personal trips, drinking on the job, taking staffers to strip clubs, and engaging in a romantic relationship with a bodyguard, who was also placed on leave this past winter.

As so often happens, fixing one problem in a sentence reveals others. Is there a difference between allegations and claims? I can’t see one. And the series of allegations would be more readable if its elements were arranged by length:

Among the allegations against the secretary: that she was drinking on the job, taking staffers to strip clubs, charging personal trips to her department, and engaging in a romantic relationship with a bodyguard, who was also placed on leave this past winter.

Or for greater concision:

Among the allegations against the secretary: that she was drinking on the job, taking staffers to strip clubs, charging personal trips to her department, and having an affair with a bodyguard, who was also placed on leave this past winter.

More scandalous acts:

Trump has pushed out Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (who was also accused of having an affair with a staffer and abuse of public resources, which she denied), and now Chavez-DeRemer — all women.

Here too the scandalous acts should be made parallel, with the longer sentence element last. There’s also a need for greater clarity. Was Noem denying both allegations, or just one? Better:

Trump has pushed out Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (who was also accused of abusing public resources and having an affair with a staffer, both of which she denied), and now Chavez-DeRemer — all women.

Now the also makes better sense with “having an affair” in both sentences — if we can speak of anything about the current regime making sense.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 132 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose. I owe my attention to arranging items in a sequence by length (when it makes sense to do so) to Bruce Ross-Larson’s Edit Yourself: A Manual for Everyone Who Works with Words (1982). See this post.]