Learn English – Too many independent clauses

clausesgrammaticalitystylesubordinate-clauses

Can I have thoughts on this sentence? I worry that the clauses are too many or that the positioning of 'would' is awkward.

On other other hand, Common Law, which at this point has infiltrated
the scene, would, as we can gather from from Littleton’s writing, deem
the contract against the law and therefore void.

Best Answer

Not being fully aware of your intention with the sentence (there are some parts which are ambiguous), I agree that it is grammatical. (You do have a few words that repeat , you could re-order the clauses to flow better, and there are synonyms that you could use to shorten parts of it.) However, the main reason why you may be having a problem with it is because of how it "looks". The only punctuation that you use, other than a period, is the comma.

Feel free to avail yourself of the more than a dozen of other marks that you may use to make your sentence easier to read. For example:

From this:

"On other other hand, Common Law, which at this point has infiltrated the scene, would, as we can gather from from Littleton’s writing, deem the contract against the law and therefore void."

To this:

"On other hand, Common Law (which at this point has infiltrated the scene) would, as we can gather from Littleton’s writing, deem the contract against the law and therefore void."

Or this:

"On other hand, we can gather from Littleton’s writing that Common Law (which at this point has infiltrated the scene) would deem the contract unlawful and therefore void."

Hope this helps.

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