mari's guide to subjective changes
One of the trickier parts of grammar and prose is the prose part of the process. While grammar for the most part deals with more objective changes that can be taught pretty straightforwardly, the prose part deals with larger sentence structure matters and often has overlap with the more subjective part of the process. This means that you're relying a bit more on instinct here and need to play more by broad guidelines than hard rules; however, there are a few ways in which we can make things clearer.
Overall, the main thing to keep in mind is that subjective changes have two main goals, namely
clarity and
readability; if the writer has not expressed their point properly or has written it in such a way that it's hard to make out, then those are our concrete issues to fix. The trap that we don't want to fall into is so-called lateral changes, since we still want our writeups to remain our writers' own work; if your reasoning for making a change is "sounds better", then that's not good, and in general you can stick to a guideline that most of the time changing either diction or sentence structure, but not both, is enough to make the change you need. You'll need to be able to actually pinpoint issues, for which focusing on (lack of) clarity and readability should be a helpful guide.
Since I believe that these things are much more easily conveyed through practice than through theory, I'll show a few examples of what I mean.
Due to Geomancy being a two-turn move means that you must believe that using it will result in you either sweeping through your opponent's team or putting them into a position that will make it impossible for them to come back, since you'll only have one chance to setup.
Due to Because Geomancy's being a two-turn nature move means that you'll only have one chance to set up, you must believe make sure that using it will result in you Togekiss either sweeping through your opponent's team (RC) or putting them into a position that will make it impossible for them to come back, since you'll only have one chance to setup.
This sentence has pretty shaky structure as is, where the main problem is that the "only one chance to set up" point is buried all the way at the end. It works best if you go through the thought process step by step; Geomancy has two turns -> only one chance to set up -> make sure Togekiss is at least gonna leave a major mark if you click the button. Moving that point to the front to reflect this order makes the sentence much more readable. Note that it depends on context whether a change like this is actually needed; this sentence is pretty long therefore prone to drowning out its own thought process, but you could also run into a shorter sentence, which by definition are much easier to take in, and in these cases it might just be fine as is.
The other notable change has to do with a condensing of clauses; while leaving the first part along the lines of "Because Geomancy is a two-turn move", that would mean we're essentially chaining at least three partial sentences together here, and the sentence can quickly just keep rambling on. This first part actually does not convey any information beyond a simple property of Geomancy, so if we adjust the wording to, well, just make it a simple property ("Geomancy's two-turn nature"), we can easily fuse two of these partial sentences into one. Once again, this may not be needed, but if a sentence reads like your math tutor slowly talking you through a complex problem, you actually risk readers losing the point of the sentence along the way, and it's better to make it more efficient.
Since Togekiss sweeps best when it can maintain full health through Oblivion Wing, it is advised that you bring it in on free switches so that you are able to best maximize its bulk and to keep it from taking unnecessary damage.
This sentences rambles on too much, and a notable issue is that maximize its bulk and avoid unnecessary damage are pretty much the same thing in this context. Removing one of the two declutters the sentence a good amount and by extension also makes it more pleasant to read.
"Vibes"-based changes like above are genuinely a good part of what makes up subjective changes, again as long as you can properly justify them. However, we can make things a bit easier yet again by putting some common errors out there; just be wary of using these as a checklist or specific points to look out for as opposed to just certain common occurrences of "poor clarity and/or readability."
Fluff is when, in simple terms, you use too many words to get to your point, which makes it difficult for readers to get to the information they actually need. Oftentimes this takes the form of standard filler phrases like "Surf is the STAB move of choice, allowing Ludicolo to take out", where, well, we know that, since it's literally on the set, and you can just as well say "Surf allows Ludicolo to take out" or even just "Surf takes out". Other cases involve mentioning information that either is accessible elsewhere anyways or is not relevant to the piece you're writing; think going out of your way to list base stats when they're right there at the top of the Dex page anyways, or contrasting the Pokemon's performance with a previous generation when the analysis focuses on the here and now. For another example:
Pelipper is a great rain setter with its ability Drizzle to boost its allies' STAB moves and a great movepool that sets it apart from its competition Politoed, with access to utility options moves such as Wide Guard, Tailwind, and U-turn as well as perfectly accurate STAB Hurricane.
where we don't need to tell the reader what Drizzle does, and its competition with Politoed is not directly relevant to the moves section of a Pelipper writeup.
Be aware that this does *not* mean "if you can say it in fewer words then do so"; once again, we're solving problems here, not trimming down characters for the sake of it. For example, both proposed changes to the Surf sentence are valid, since neither of them really holds the text back from getting to the point, and removing the number from "Ludicolo's base 90 Special Attack can hold it back" is just nitpicking for the same reason. In general, it helps to focus on cutting down clauses or sentences rather than characters; see once again the example where we have removed the entire STAB move of choice clause and changed allowing to be the main verb.
Repetitive sentence structure can make analyses tiresome to read, which is something we don't want, since sidetracking our readers out of them means we can't teach them what we want to. Let's pick the Surf example back up here, since when we do find ourselves writing about similar subject matter a lot, we sometimes accidentally end up writing the same sentence repeatedly with just a couple variables swapped out. Specifically, it's common for writers to use "allows to" phrasing for every move and item description out there; now that is the point where you actually would cut that phrase out of some sentences and/or change it up with something else to make the read slightly more engaging. For a very standard example:
Energy Ball allows Ludicolo to hit hits Water-types such as Golduck and Gastrodon super effectively. Ice Beam allows Ludicolo to take out Dragon-types such as Garchomp and Salamence.
where the one change is enough to stop the sentences from reading like an echo of each other, and we don't actually need to change anything else when this was the only issue to resolve and both sentences checked out as is grammatically.
Run-on sentences are sentences that, well, just keep going, where the writer basically just keeps rambling on. This is bad for a few reasons; first, it makes it much harder for readers to pick up on the info they need when it's not laid out in a properly structured way, and secondly they also inherently tend to lead to fluffy writing when the writer is simply thought dumping rather than structuring and distilling their thoughts properly. You can address this by making sure every sentence focuses on conveying only a singular concept or idea. Once again, this is not a hard and fast rule, since there's no reason to fall back to elementary school level writing where we make every sentence 7 words or fewer, but it's a good guideline for keeping the amount of information in a singular sentence in check. It helps if you look at it via conjunctions, words that can connect sentences. E.g. you can use "because" to add a reason or "if" or "unless" to add a condition, which of course is totally fine; particular ones to be on the lookout for are the likes of "and" and "but", which don't do a whole lot other than simply tie two equal-level sentences together with a bit of nuance. Naturally you can use these, but if you see multiple of these in a sentence then that may be a warning flag that you can hack things up a bit more. For an example, take a look at
Gastrodon has a twofold synergy with the Pelipper / Ludicolo lead pairing, as its primary role is to switch in and quickly turn into a ferocious powerhouse thanks to Storm Drain boosts from Surf, but Pelipper in particular also provides invaluable support for it, as Gastrodon cannot function while enemy Grass-types are on the field, and Pelipper's Hurricane does a great job removing these preemptively.
which can be un-trainwrecked to
Gastrodon has a twofold synergy with the Pelipper / Ludicolo lead pairing. Its primary role is to switch in and quickly turn into a ferocious powerhouse thanks to Storm Drain boosts from Surf; however, Pelipper in particular also provides invaluable support for it, as its Hurricane does a great job preemptively removing the Grass-types that stop Gastrodon from functioning.
The actual changes made here are mostly involve hacking it up a bit so that we do a better job keeping a single idea to a single sentence, but the condensing of the mention of Grass-types might also warrant some highlighting. It's the main culprit of the original version taking an extremely step-by-step approach to the explanation, but if we relegate it to a simple aside then that does not actually make that bit any harder to understand and it stops obfuscating the more integral information.
Ambiguity deserves a mention in general, since a lot of the point of subjective changes it to clear up text where things can be misread, which of course by default is the case with this. It's difficult to provide concrete examples here since they are very much case by case and identify them as you see them with not the biggest common denominators, but pronouns are a pretty recurring thing that makes for some good examples. Take the following example:
Scizor pairs well with Gastrodon, as it handles Fire-types and provides it with an effective immunity to strong Water-type attacks.
where, well... who is "it" here? A quick and easy change that makes things much clearer would be:
Scizor pairs well with Gastrodon, as it which handles Fire-types and provides it with an effective immunity to strong Water-type attacks.
In general, the way you can approach this from a linguistic lens is, the point of pronouns overall is so that we can communicate without repeating names and proper nouns all the time. The easiest way to look at it is that a sentence puts a certain noun or concept in the reader's "focus", which in the given example would be Scizor; however, multiple cases of "it" referring to different things and things shifting in and out of focus, the initial version requires a double take that we shouldn't have to do. The change makes it so that "it" clearly refers to Scizor, as it should. Applying this the other way around, this is also the reason why sometimes you actually need to swap in pronouns to make a text read properly:
Gastrodon works great on rain teams, as Gastrodon's its Storm Drain ability takes advantage of allied Surf usage for massive power boosts.
where the initial version reads actively jarring because we're repeating a name that is already in focus. This concept may not apply super cleanly to more involved sentences and you might end up with weird sentences if you end up applying it too robotically, but hopefully it at least makes for a good guideline on how to approach these cases generally.
Keep in mind though that ambiguity-based changes are very much a case-by-case thing and that instances of "well this can technically be read wrong if you go out of your way to" should not be touched if any reasonable reader will understand them properly. The word "respectively" is a common case here; while it does have valid use cases if you can genuinely misread what goes where, most of the time it's simply intuitive and you don't actually need the word. For a rather extreme example, take "Pelipper pairs well with Ground-types and Volt Absorb users like Gastrodon and Thundurus-T, respectively", where... well I am sure the example speaks louder than any explanation I could provide.
Once again: nothing of this is an exact science, and there will be instances of you making a change to something that someone else would have left alone or vice versa where things are in a "could go either way" range of whether there are actual issues with clarity and readability.
This is fine and something that's simply inherent to, well, subjective changes; all of this is simply to make sure that you find potential issues to address without going fully overboard, not to get all of our checks to look uniform.