Today we discussed more on writing a clear paper. Here is the sentence in question. Practice writing
Even the youngest children could make style matches and could do so even when a subject matter match was also possible, suggesting that they are sensitive to artistic style and can focus on that dimension in the face of irrelevant variation on other dimensions.
Tricia Striano
Research Methods 
This sentence is far too long, too wordy and fairly incomprehensible. I find it difficult to re-word because I am not sure of exactly what the author is trying to say. My attempt at re-structuring would be breaking the sentence into two sentences:
Even the youngest children made style matches when a subject matter match was also possible. This suggests that children in all age groups displayed sensitivity to artistic style despite variation of match type.
I had to read this sentence like 6 times in order to understand half of what it is trying to say, just half! I would as well break it into two separate sentences, or stich the words around to make it sound a bit clearer:
When a subject matter match was possible, young children were able to style match. This suggests that despite variation of match type, children in a all age groups displayed sensitivity to artistic style.
Switch* I meant to write switch. Excuse the typo.
This sentence is definitely too long and sounds very choppy. The repetition of the word “even” seems unnecessary. Although I’ve read it several times, I am still not sure if I’m understanding the author correctly. Therefore, it’s hard to rewrite it while still following through with the general idea of the sentence.
Even the youngest children were able to make matches based on style when a subject matter match was also possible. This is suggesting that they are sensitive to artistic style and can focus solely on that dimension despite variations on other dimensions.
Surprisingly, young children can make style matches. They can also do so when a subject matter was possible. This suggests that young children are in fact, sensitive to artistic style and they are capable of focusing on this dimension.
I revised the sentence as much as I good while keeping the authors content and intentions. I started off the sentence with “surprisingly” because I felt as though that was the effect they were going for with all their “even” this and “even” that. The last sentence was a bit redundant. The definition for “focus” means that you concentrate most of your attention on one area and not others. With this in mind, I didn’t feel that it was necessary to say that they can focus in one area despite other variations.
To simplify further:
Surprisingly, young children can make style matches when a subject matter was possible. This suggests that young children are in fact, sensitive to artistic style and they are capable of focusing on this dimension.
The youngest children could make style matches even when a subject matter match was possible, suggesting that they were sensitive to and could focus on artistic style in the face of variation in other dimensions.
Didn’t we discuss a different sentence in class?
The sentence is really long. It is difficult to understand even after reading it for 5 times. I don’t think my grandma would be able to understand this sentence. It can be broken down into two parts. Such as….Even the youngest children could make style matches even when a subject matter match was also possible.This suggest that they are sensitive to artistic style and can focus on that dimension in the face of irrelevant variation on other dimensions.
I have read the sentence several times and still do not fully understand the point the researcher is trying to get at. This sentence is far to long and complicated to understand as a I reader. I suggest it should be written like the following:
The youngest children who made style matches even though there was a subject matter match, would suggest that youing children in fact are capable of focusing and being sinsitive to the artistic style.
I think they were trying to use complicated words to impress the reader, not good. I will make an attempt to rephrase this.
Since young children are able to style match a subject matter, this suggests that young children are sensitive to artistic styles and cam focus on different variations and dimensions of an object.