Is this sentence formatted okay?

Question

Is the following sentence formatted/worded okay? Should anything be changed about it for clarity or flow?

Henry quickly became fascinated with Jack as a politician, convinced that he was different from many of the others he’d seen before.

Answer 1

Hi, Jordan!

I think this sentence looks great!

As other tutors have pointed out already, depending on the context in which you are writing this (a formal academic essay vs. a more informal writing assignment), you may want to consider removing the contraction, as "he had" would be considered more formal than the contraction "he'd."

The same is true of the word "before" at the end of the sentence. While ending a sentence on a preposition is now common in many publications (and certainly in informal settings), there are some audiences that may take issue with that construction. To remedy this, you might consider removing the entire phrase (ending the sentence with "others"), as there's no easy way to move the preposition earlier in the sentence.

Depending on the context, you may want to revise these areas, but I suspect in most cases, it would not matter whether you include a contraction or end on a preposition. I certainly do not sweat those details with my college writing students at least. What is important is that you've clearly communicated the information you are working to share in the sentence. Nice work!

Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

All best,

Alex

Answer 2

This sentence is mostly formatted properly. Your use of the command before "convinced" is needed because that phrase is an expletive because extra information is added to the sentence that is useful but not needed.

When you are writing academically, you want to avoid using contractions because that is proper English. "He'd" needs to be changed to "he had" to makes this sentence proper.

Another thing, "before" is a preposition and you do not want to end a sentence with a preposition because it leaves the sentence open-ended. (This is also proper English.) I would consider adding something like "before in his research" or leaving out "before" all together and ending you sentence after "seen".

Answer 3

There is nothing immediately off about the sentence, although it is a bit wordy. Specifically in the dependent clause, you could remove "he'd seen before" and "many of" to make a shorter sentence without losing meaning.

For example: Henry quickly became fascinated with Jack as a politician, convinced that he was different from the others.

You could also write: Henry quickly became fascinated with Jack as a politician, convinced that he was different from many others.