: Re: Avoiding "and" as a sentence structure I have a horrific habit I'm finding it very difficult to break. A disturbingly large portion of my sentences consist of the same structure-- two parts

@Speyer920

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You have six sentences' worth of text in three conjoined sentences. Not all of the pairings are necessary and some might not be "correct"; for example, you could just as easily conjoin the question and the answer, which are currently part of two different sentences.

One way to attack this problem is to break it into the six sentences and then ask yourself which ones really go together. Join only those ones.

Another way to break it up is to not always use "and" for your conjunction. You can also use semicolons to tie sentence clauses together, and you can use words like "then" to connect independent sentences.

Finally, you can mix up your structure more (see example below).

Putting all these ideas together, here is one possible revision of your text:

After a while our words subsided. I commented on a picture of his dog which hung on the wall over the television, and he grew excited and asked if I would like to see better. Uncertainly I answered yes.
Then he rose from the couch and headed for a doorway to the left.

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