Sentence structure: an intuitive art

Sentence structure doesn't have to be a technical science, it can be an intuitive art. If you try to get too technical about it, you end up carrying around a basket of jargony words like clause, predicate, and compound-complex. We're not going to do that because I'm a cool mom and I don't like overly prescriptive rules and I barely understand the rules myself so who am I to tell you to learn the technical parameters of sentence structure?

Often when something you've written sounds weird and you're struggling to diagnose it, sentence structure is the culprit and switching the order is an easy fix. It's the have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-on again of the editing world.

To find an example to use for this, I cycled through random pages on Wikipedia. After getting bogged down in an article about the framework designed to standardise sleeping bag temperatures sold in the EU, I came across this sentence in the entry about Chesapeake pipes. For context, the paragraph is trying to explain where the Chesapeake pipe originated.

Amongst the English settlers, it is known that there were pipe-makers, with documentary evidence noting of at least two professionals in this field having migrated from Europe to the Chesapeake in the 17th century.

This is a perfect example of the type of sentence that a) we all write, especially when under the pump and b) are in desperate need of cleaning up.

The pipes in question.

Let's intuitively break up the sentence into phrases. The commas are helpful to understand where the sentence naturally pauses. Don't worry about the phrases not making perfect sense or being incomplete.

Amongst the English settlers,

it is known that there were pipe-makers,

with documented evidence noting

of at least two professionals in this field

having migrated from Europe to the Chesapeake in the 17th century.

Now, we rearrange. When writing with the intent to inform, I like to follow the journalistic inverted pyramid and put the most important details at the start (including your basic who, what, when, where, why, how).

Following this logic, it makes more sense to me to start the sentence with the origin of the claim to anchor the sentence - the documented evidence - and then move into the phrase about who - the pipe-makers. After you have the most important pieces at the start, the rest of the phrases fall into place depending on what you want to highlight, like this:

with documented evidence noting -- it is known that there were pipe-makers -- at least two professionals in this field -- Amongst the English settlers, -- having migrated from Europe to the Chesapeake in the 17th century.

In this format, the phrase "two professionals in this field" becomes redundant so we cut it. “Documented” evidence is a bit of a unnecessary addition so I would cut that too and end up with a sentence that looks like this:

with evidence noting -- it is known that there were pipe-makers -- at least two -- Amongst the English settlers, -- having migrated from Europe to the Chesapeake in the 17th century.

From here you edit the sentence so it flows and makes grammatical sense in the new order.

The evidence notes -- it is known that __there were at least two pipe-makers -- amongst the English settlers -- who migrated from Europe to the Chesapeake in the 17th century.

Et voila! You end up with:

The evidence notes that there were at least two pipe-makers among the English settlers who migrated from Europe to Chesapeake in the 17th century.

The order of the phrases in this, or any, sentence depends on what you wanted to prioritise in the sentence. If the piece of writing was about migration, it might be better to organise the phrases like this:

There is evidence noting that when English settlers migrated from Europe to Chesapeake in the 17th century, there were least two pipe-makers among them.

There is no correct and final version of this sentence only endless variations that serve endless purposes.

TL;DR? When editing difficult or information-dense sentences, break them into phrases based on what feels right and rearrange them. This editing trick will solve multitudes of sentence problems.