Teachers! Does this sentence seems okay?

Question

I translated a title of an editorial from my language (Korean) to English and want to know if it sounds okay!

"The ruling party excluding the ‘income-led growth’ and ‘nuclear power plant closure’ policy from its pledges for the general election should make its course clear."

1. Did I use the articles correctly in 'a title of an editorial'(underline)?

2. having excluded vs excluding

: At first, I put 'having excluded' in the sentence but changed my mind like the sentence above

because a sentence with 'excluding' feels more proper to me but without any specific reason T.T

Would you explain which one is correct and why?

3. policy vs policies

: Although the editorial covers two policies (income-led growth, nuclear power plant closure),

I thought those two belong to one general policy of the government and chose 'policy' other than 'policies'.

Is it okay?

4. I used the preposition 'for' and do you think this choice was good?

Thank you for reading my post and I'm looking forward to getting your comments! ?????

GPY · Accepted Answer

ANNE202"The ruling party excluding the ‘income-led growth’ and ‘nuclear power plant closure’ policy from its pledges for the general election should make its course clear."

This sentence does not read properly. The main problem is that it is unclear how "excluding" is supposed to fit with "should make". I would need to understand what you are trying to say before attempting to correct it. For example, is the headline predicting that the party will exclude those policies and thereby make its course clear? Or something else?

ANNE2021. Did I use the articles correctly in 'a title of an editorial'(underline)?

"the title of an editorial" seems more likely, though "a" is not definitely wrong.

ANNE2023. policy vs policies

To me, these policies seem quite disparate, so "policies" would seem correct, unless there is some special reason in Korea why those two things should be very closely associated.

I don't see a strong reason to put the policies in quotation marks.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

ANNE202Teachers! Does this sentence seems okay?

When the helping verb "do" is used in an interrogative sentence, the base form of the main verb is used.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

"The ruling party excluding the ‘income-led growth’ and ‘nuclear power plant closure’ policy from its pledges for the general election should make its course clear."

It is a very poor sentence from the point of clarity.

First, the non-finite clause (excluding the ‘income-led growth’ and ‘nuclear power plant closure’ policy from its pledges for the general election) is non-defining. It does not identify the "ruling party" as if there were more than one of them.

Because the clause does not identify which "ruling party" you mean, it must be set off by commas.

Otherwise, the reader believes there are two ruling parties, one that excluded these items, and the other that did not exclude them.

Second, when you remove any non-defining clause, the sentence must still make sense and have the same meaning. Let's try it with this sentence. The sentence becomes:

"The ruling party should make its course clear."

Now that reads like a criticism of the ruling party. Their course is not clear. They have to do something to clarify it. I am not sure that this is the correct meaning.

Third, there seem to be two policies, one related to "income-led growth" and a second, unrelated one "nuclear power plant closure. "

I cannot fathom how these two vastly different things can be considered as one single policy.

I am not certain of the original meaning, but I will make a guess or two or three. You can see from these various plausible interpretations how unclear and ambiguous the original was.

Because the ruling party has excluded the ‘income-led growth’ and ‘nuclear power plant closure’ policies from its platform for the general election, they have made its course clear.
The ruling party should make its course clear by excluding the ‘income-led growth’ and ‘nuclear power plant closure’ policies from its platform for the general election.
Excluding the ‘income-led growth’ and ‘nuclear power plant closure’ policies from its platform for the general election should make the ruling party's course clear.

Teachers! Does this sentence seems okay?

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