Everybody Writes, 2nd Edition

17Place the Most Important Words at the Beginning of Each Sentence

We tend to junk up the beginning of our sentences with modifiers and qualifiers, making the reader work harder to figure out what we are saying.

It might sound basic and remedial to say that each sentence should begin with the subject (the leading actor) and verb (the action your actor takes). Yet it's the easiest, fastest way to make your writing more direct and appealing.

The first words of every sentence should make a friendly first impression to encourage the reader to keep going—much the way a favorable first impression at a party encourages conversation (as opposed to, say, desperate glances around the room to find someone else to talk to).

Here's what I mean.

This is the first sentence of an introductory paragraph of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention style guide: “According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), released in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education, 30 million adults struggle with basic reading tasks.”¹

Let's break it down.

The main idea in that sentence is that millions of people are not fully literate; everything else in the sentence is secondary. The main idea—the important words—should be placed right at the beginning. They are the star of the show.

So:

Thirty million adults struggle with reading, according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) report, released in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education.

(The guide is titled Simply Put. Ironically, ...