Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

O b s e r v i n g D i c t i o n
Test your observation skills on these two sentences:
A.
The town’s new parking policy, which goes into
effect on Monday, should significantly reduce
traffic congestion on Main Street.
B.
The town’s draconian new parking policy, which
goes into effect on Monday, should significantly
reduce traffic congestion on Main Street.
You don’t need Sherlock Holmes’s magnifying
glass to see the difference between sentence A and sen-
tence B: B uses the words 
draconian
and 
new
to describe
the parking policy, while A uses only 
new
. (Go back to
Lesson 3 if you’ve forgotten what 
draconian
means.)
Now that you have noticed this, why is it important?
1.
What does sentence B tell you that sentence A
doesn’t?
a.
what type of policy is being discussed
b.
how the writer feels about the policy
c.
when the policy begins
The answer is 
b
. Both sentences tell you that the
policy is a new parking policy, and both say that the
policy goes into effect on Monday. But sentence B,
because it adds the word 
draconian
, tells you how the
writer 
feels
about the new policy: He doesn’t like it. His
opinion is implied through his choice of the word 
dra-
conian
. Rather than directly saying, “I think the policy
is very severe,” the writer 
suggests
or 
implies
that this is
the way he feels.
–
D I C T I O N : W H AT ’ S I N A W O R D ?
–
9 6

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Denotation and Connotation
Now, suppose sentence A also had another adjective to
describe the new policy: