Subject Consistency

After hours of writing, you hand your finished essay to a friend and ask them to read it over before you turn it in. You watch their helpful smile gradually fade into a narrow-eyed, puzzled expression. You see their eyes reach the end of a paragraph then jump back to the beginning to re-read it. They finish reading and give you their full review: "so ... what is the essay about?"

Seeing the reader's confusion doesn't feel good, does it? Luckily, you can use writing strategies to avoid problems with an unclear subject in the future. One of those strategies is subject consistency. Keeping the subject consistent in your writing will help you to write with clarity and confidence that will impress your audience.

Meaning of Subject Consistency

Here's a reminder of the grammatical definition of a subject:

You can think of the subject as the main noun phrase of a sentence.

Now onto subject consistency! Maintaining a consistent subject throughout a sentence makes the sentence clearer and easier to read.

How do you keep a subject consistent?

You can achieve subject consistency at the sentence level by rewording the sentence to maintain one subject.

You can achieve subject consistency on a larger scale by organizing the paragraphs by their subjects.

The most important thing to remember about subject consistency is that subject consistency is not a steadfast rule. Maintaining a consistent subject is the best idea when it makes the most sense. In some sentences, a change in subject can make the most sense.

Use your best judgment when writing. If rewording or changing your sentences to create subject consistency makes the most sense, then make those changes. Otherwise, leave the sentences as they are!

What Are Some Examples of Subject Consistency?

Subject consistency can exist in multiple forms. These examples cover some common subject inconsistencies, as well as how to avoid them.

How Do You Fix Inconsistencies?

One way to fix a subject inconsistency is to change the wording of the sentence slightly. If you don't pay close attention when writing, you can easily make some subject-consistency mistakes like this one:

Fig. 1 - Traveling and discovering the world (with subject consistency).

The subject of the first half of the sentence is people, and the subject of the second half is you.

This inconsistency makes the sentence confusing, and it's awkward. You can fix it by changing the subject of one half of the sentence to match the other. Here's what that would look like:

Both of these corrections maintain a consistent subject. As a result, the sentences are easier to follow.

Take a look at this other example:

The subject of the first clause is you, and the subject of the second clause is her chair. This inconsistency isn't necessary, and it makes the sentence less clear. A consistent subject makes the sentence flow more easily:

The subject of both clauses is you now, and the sentence is more readable.

When is Subject Consistency Not Necessary?

In those previous examples, a consistent subject made more sense than an inconsistent subject. This isn't always the case, though. Sometimes an inconsistent subject makes for the most logical sentence.

The subject of the first clause is I, and the subject of the second clause is my niece. Should this subject inconsistency be fixed?

Well, consider rewording the sentence to maintain a consistent subject:

Now, the subject of both clauses is I, but the consistency seems forced. The sentence is more complicated with the consistent subject than it was originally. In this case, it's best to leave the sentence the way it was, instead of changing it just for subject consistency.

So, what's the rule here? When do you change the subjects, and when do you leave them alone? Well, it's up to you. As you write, look at your sentences and decide for yourself, "is this sentence clearer with a consistent or inconsistent subject?"

Importance of Subject Consistency in Writing

The examples so far have involved subject consistency in one or two basic sentences. Now for a bigger example: subject consistency in an essay discussing The Stanford Prison Experiment:

Fig. 2 - The Stanford Prison Experiment.

This paragraph is a bit disorganized. Some sentences describe the experiment itself and others describe the participants. The result is subject inconsistency throughout the entire paragraph.

To clean up this text, you could separate the sentences with the experiment as the subject from sentences with the participants as the subject. Then, you can place the groups of sentences into separate paragraphs.

The first paragraph of this corrected version contains all the sentences that describe the experiment. The second paragraph contains all the sentences that describe the participants. Organizing the paragraphs by the subject this way makes the text easier to read and understand.

The key to maintaining subject consistency is to always remember what you're writing about. As you write, ask yourself what the sentence or paragraph is about. Whatever your answer is, that should probably be the main subject of the sentence or paragraph.

Subject-Predicate Consistency

An important factor of subject consistency is subject-predicate consistency, otherwise known as subject-verb agreement.

How does subject-verb agreement apply to subject consistency? Well, if the subject and verb don't agree, the subject can become unclear. You can see it in this example:

The subject, the leader, is singular, but the verb, are organizing, is plural.

This mistake is tricky because the noun is next to the verb clubs, which is plural. Because the verb agrees with clubs, it's easy to assume that clubs is the subject instead of the leader. This mistake in subject-verb agreement makes the subject less clear, which confuses the reader.

To fix this, you need to change the form of either the subject or the verb to match each other.

Now, the subject and predicate agree, and it's clear that either "the leader" or "leaders" is the subject of the sentence. The reader doesn't have to reread the sentence to verify what the subject is!