GRAVITY sentence

Question

Could you tell me what you think about this sentence grammar wise?

1 When washing the dishes, if your sleeves aren't pulled up past your elbow, they will get wet as the water will trickle all the way down to your elbow and because of gravity can't go up past the elbow.

and this?

2 Chemist have add a compound to the previously unaltered virus to speed the mortality process. (can you say speed the mortality process?)

thank you

Mr Wordy · Accepted Answer

alc24When washing the dishes, if your sleeves aren't pulled up past your elbow, they will get wet as the water will trickle all the way down to your elbow and because of gravity can't go up past the elbow.

This seems muddled to me. "... and because of gravity can't go up past the elbow" seems to be given as part of the reason why your sleeves will get wet if they aren't pulled up, which doesn't make any sense.

alc24Chemist have add a compound to the previously unaltered virus to speed the mortality process. (can you say speed the mortality process?)

How many chemists? Also, "have add" is wrong.

I think "mortality process" is more usually applied to statistical modelling rather than the actual course of a disease or infection in an individual.

Alc24 · Answer

Thank you Mr Wordy,

So for number on, I'd just leave out the Gravity clause, and it would work?
how would you say it?

and for the CHEMIST, if not mortality process, what would you use?

Thank you

Mr Wordy · Answer

alc24
So for number on, I'd just leave out the Gravity clause, and it would work?

how would you say it?

You could say:

"When you're washing (the) dishes, if your sleeves aren't pulled up past your elbows, they will get wet as the water will trickle all the way down to your elbows."

(If you're talking about dishes in general then you don't need "the". The word "you're" might be omitted in casual speech but IMO it's logically needed because the subject of the next clause is "your sleeves", not "you".)

This sentence is passable I suppose, but it doesn't seem very well balanced. It ends on a weak repetition of the word "elbows", so there is an anti-climactic sense. Another way of writing it would be:

"When you're washing dishes, the water will trickle all the way down to your elbows, so if your sleeves aren't pulled up at least that far, they will get wet."

alc24and for the CHEMIST, if not mortality process, what would you use?

Perhaps you could say:

"Chemists have added a compound to the previously unaltered virus to make it even more lethal."

However, the concept of "adding a compound" to a virus seems biologically dubious to me. Are you talking about genetic modification?

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