Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
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Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

a long sentence with the verb “demand”

I want to write as follows, but it is confusing.:

This modern society, which is increasingly being globalized and opening to the world, demands the attitude of understanding different countries and respecting different culture on the basis of broad knowledge of various places of the world of students of this era.

The above ‘s structure is as follows:

The modern society demands something of somebody.

Here, something is [the attitude of understanding different countries and respecting different culture on the basis of broad knowledge of various places of the world], and somebody is [students of this era]

The setence structure can be simplified as follows:

This modern society, which is increasingly being globalized and opening to the world, demands [the attitude of understanding different countries and respecting different culture on the basis of broad knowledge of various places of the world] of [students of this era].

I am not sure in such a case, how I should write it. One solutin may be this?

This modern society, which is increasingly being globalized and opening to the world, demands, of [students of this era], [the attitude of understanding different countries and respecting different culture on the basis of broad knowledge of various places of the world].

Please help me, thank you very much.

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Comments

I think this is just a bad sentence. Sometimes it's just better to completely recast the whole sentence. For instance:

As this society becomes more internationalized, the students are expected to know more about other countries and to respect cultural differences.

This essentially says the same thing.

Your sentence has a lot of redundant words.

"being globalized" and "opening to the world" are essentially the same thing. You cannot open to the world without being globalized. Or, you cannot globalize your country without opening to the world.

"of this era" is not necessary. You've already said "modern society", so we know you are talking about this era.

"on the basis of broad knowledge of various places of the world"

Why do you need this at all? You've already said "understanding different countries".

It sounds like it was translated from a different language, or you are trying to squeeze a lot of words into it to make it sound more substantial.

Dyske Jul-30-2009

2 votes   Permalink   Report Abuse

I understand this sentence is not the best example, but my point is how to deal with repeated prepositions of noun objects with a preposition-having-verb.

For example: in using DEMAND A OF B
let's suppose A include multiple nouns connected by OF
then, in details the phrase will look like
DEMAND A[something OF something] OF B

Adding complication, let's suppose B is also multiple-noun object including OF.
Then, the phrase will look like

DEMAND A[something of something] OF B[something of something]
, which will finally look like

DEMAND something OF something OF something OF something

so, how do you deal with this to mean DEMAND A OF B?

There can be many other similar cases.
For example, "put A in B" can all become as follows

PUT someting in something IN something in something

johnkoh Jul-30-2009

1 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

While he may not have addressed your question directly, I have to agree with Dyske. Another thing I find awkward is your use of "demand". A demand is a strong call to action. I won't insist it's actually wrong, but to me, demanding an attitude seems a bit awkward.

Weird: "Society demands an attitude of global understanding"

Better: "Society demands that we adopt an attitude of global understanding"

actually, the word "attitude" itself seems superfluous.

Better still: "Society demands that we understand things globally", or something to that effect.

Don't twist it around into a stilted, passive voiced, compromise. As you said yourself, you demand something of someone.

porsche Jul-31-2009

2 votes   Permalink   Report Abuse

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