Poor Writing

An example of an article that is poorly written is “Global Warming Solutions Backfire” by Kelly Zhou. In the first sentence you can find various errors in the writing. As we discussed in the lecture, there is no need to use big words that are unknown to most of the readers. The author of the article used words such as bemoaning, which means to express grief or disappointment. Regretting or mourning could have been used in place of this, and would have been clearer for the readers. In addition to this, the first sentence is 43 words long, opposed to the rule that sentences should be 17 words or less. Long sentences, as well as using big, unknown words, are unnecessary and do not allow for clear reading.
These problems arise throughout the whole article, with words such as sanctimonious and irrevocable, along with long, confusing sentences. This article was published in a high school newspaper. The audience therefore ranges from teenagers 14-18 years old. Considering it’s hard enough to get teenagers at this age to even read a newspaper, if an article is confusing and hard to read, there is no way a 16 year old is going to even attempt to read it. The first sentence of this article, which is long enough to be its own paragraph, would have many teenage readers put down the newspaper for good. The writer obviously did not think of its audience, and whom they were writing to. Although the content of the article, which is about the problem of global warming, is informative and includes many good arguments, the article is not targeted towards the right audience.

http://voice.paly.net/view_story.php?id=5821