As an author, your biggest mission is to communicate information to your readers clearly and precisely. Academic writers often use comparisons to highlight the importance of a discovery or finding or to explain the degree to which something has changed. Comparisons can often help facilitate understanding and provide important context, but if written incorrectly, they can leave your audience more confused than they were before. Take a look at the following sentence:
This sentence leaves us with some questions. I ate more than what? I ate more than who? I ate more than when? This sentence is a classic example of an incomplete comparison. This is because it contains only one thing that is being compared: the amount that I ate. It can be fixed by adding more information- a second element of comparison. Complete comparisons must include at least two things or ideas that are being compared.
How to Fix it?Let’s look at a few examples of how incomplete comparisons can keep your audience from understanding the significance of your work. Take the following example sentence. Can you find the error?
These findings sound important, but the way the sentence is written now, it is hard to understand exactly how big of a problem women face in salary discrimination. Women earned less than who? Less than what?
By adding more information, we’ve given the reader a way to understand the weight of our findings. Let’s take another example:
At first glance, this sentence seems fine. 15% more! That’s a lot! But is it?
These examples make the problem in the first sentence clear: there isn’t enough information to help us know how much the government promised to spend. The local government promised to spend 15% more, but 15% more than what? The amount of money promised by the local government changes quite a lot between each of these sentences, even though in each case it is spending 15% more. Without the second element, the true meaning of the sentence is lost. Let’s try another example. Can you find the problem in this sentence?
Not quite sure where the error is? Here are some hints to help you figure it out.
See the problem? Even though the meaning of the sentence “Researchers found that Danish people liked fish more than Japanese people” might seem obvious, it is, in fact, an incomplete comparison. By omitting the word “did” from the end of the sentence, the reader is unsure if the researchers compared how much Danish people like various things, or if they compared the dietary preferences of Denmark and Japan. This example highlights an important point. Although it might seem like the context makes the comparison easy to understand, it is critical to make sure that a comparative sentence is complete on its own and does not rely on the surrounding context to make its meaning clear. When
you are explaining your findings or making a case for your argument in a paper, a clear comparison allows you to reinforce your meaning and guide the reader to your message.
Now that you know how to avoid this common error, you’re on your way to becoming a better writer and communicating exactly what you want to say! Do incomplete comparisons hold you back from taking your writing to the next level? What tips do you follow to avoid common pitfalls? Share your comments in the below section! |