Sentence Weight

I recently read a great article about the weight certain words and their placement have in a sentence. I am a proponent of starting most sentences with a person, place, or thing. When you start a sentence this way, you tend to avoid common errors like misplaced modifiers, sentence fragments (especially this one), and others.

When you begin a sentence with a person, place, or thing, it also tends to leave the hefty, important information towards the end of the sentence. This is typically where you want your longer or more complex phrases. Placing longer and complex phrases towards the end of a sentence is better and more engaging for the reader.

Here are a few examples: I was walking my dog down the street as the wind was blowing fiercely. This sentence gives the reader a nice picture of what is taking place. You probably even created a picture in your head of what was taking place. Now let's try it with the weight shifted a bit: As the wind was fiercely blowing, I was walking my dog down the street. Same sentence with a bit of a different impact. By the end of the last example, did the fiercely blowing wind have as much of an impact? I'd argue no.

When writing your police reports, keep this concept in mind. Try to start every sentence with a person (I, me, we, they), place (park, street, store), or thing (dog, truck, weapon), and leave the important detail(s) towards the end of each sentence. Example: I exited my patrol car, and the suspect took off running down the dark alley. Now here is the same sentence with the weight shifted: The suspect took off running down the dark alley as I exited my patrol car. Both examples say the same thing, but the first example leaves the weight at the end. It's a small difference, but small differences make big impacts over time.