Excessive subordination

Subordinate clauses provide conditions for statements, but too many conditions within one sentence can make it more difficult to understand. In the following example, the two subordinate clauses make the sentence unnecessarily difficult to understand.

"When the printer prints the faxes, the faxes are cleared from memory unless you indicate in the fax menu that they should be saved."

To improve readability, commit one of the conditions to its own sentence. In the following example, the author has converted the "unless. . ." clause into a separate sentence.

"In order to save faxes, choose Save in the fax menu before you print. When the printer prints the faxes, the faxes are cleared from memory."