When English clashes with other languages: Insights and cautions from the Writer’s Craft series

Spanish

Sentence structure

Your tendency may be to write longer sentences and use a variety of synonyms to avoid monotony

Try shorter sentences and word consistency as a strategy to improve clarity

Prepositions

You may get confused trying to figure out, for instance, when to use “in”, “on”, “at”. In Spanish, you would only use the word “de” for all those three

Spanish has significantly fewer prepositions. You may need to memorize the common English prepositions or use a search engine

French

Sentence structure

Even when you try to write simple and short sentences, it may seem to require more words to do so in French than in English

Avoid long convoluted sentences in English by seeking parsimony: check that all words are essential when critiquing your own writing

Adjective positioning

You may be used to putting the adjective/qualifier after the noun/subject in French (e.g., blue sky / ciel bleu), so your English writing sometimes does this

Revise each sentence by identifying the noun/subject and adjective/qualifier and verifying that the qualifier precedes the noun as per English word order convention

Dutch

Sentence structure

You may struggle with the position of adjuncts, what a sentence can ‘carry’ in subject position, and the limited freedom in ordering the elements of an English sentence

Avoid ‘heavy’ subject clauses (lots of information in subject position) and make sure the subject position houses the most important information in the sentence. Don’t fling around the parts of the sentence—that can create chaos, rather than cleverness

Parallel structure

You may tend to use synonyms and variety in sentence structures to ‘polish’ your text. However, variety can compromise clarity and dilute parallelism

Put clarity before variety: avoid synonyms when possible. Try using parallel structure to strengthen your key messages

German

Sentence structure

You may be accustomed to writing longer, more complex sentences that try to build up tension

Aim for short sentences, put the main information first and avoid too many conjunctions

Paragraphing

Your German paragraphs are supposed to combine several strands of thought, so the principle of paragraph unity can feel foreign

Focus on unity—one idea per paragraph. Start with a topic sentence that clearly signals that idea