grammar - Constructing compound sentences


Consider the following sentence:



One of the items that needed a further development was a research on child nodes of a story representing its sub categories being updated the moment the list of sub categories is changed through edit page for stories.



The part from the beginning of the sentence to the word "research" is more or less clear. And then I would like to clarify what the research was about. Other facts that you might need:



  1. The research is complete.

  2. Child nodes represents sub categories of a story.

  3. The research was investigating a possibility of establishing the update mechanism.

  4. The mechanism is designated to update child nodes.

  5. The update must take place every time when the list of sub categories is changed.


Now to the questions themselves:



  1. Is my usage of passive voice (being updated) to describe what this research was about correct?

  2. What other options (all you can think of) are possible? How do they change the meaning?


If you are going to suggest to split this sentence into several, see the question How to rephrase a sentence?



Answer




One of the items that needed a further development was a research on child nodes of a story representing its sub categories being updated the moment the list of sub categories is changed through edit page for stories.



While this sentence looks grammatically correct, it is too long to be clearly understood. It is possible to split it in shorter sentences and keep the same meaning. That's what I recommend. For example:



One of the items that needed further development relates to the child nodes. The child nodes represent the subcategories of a story. They need to be updated when the subcategory list is changed via the Edit page for stories.




To answer your questions about that sentence:



Is my usage of passive voice (being updated) to describe what this research was about correct?



I don't think it was wrong, but it wasn't very clear.



What other options (all you can think of) are possible? How do they change the meaning



See if you like the change that I made in the sentences above on the clause that included "being updated".


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