How to describe relations between objects unambiguously?

Question

Following Martha's advise I am splitting up a question Compound sentences, the punctuation and mooore.

Consider the following fragment:

child nodes of a story representing its sub categories

I intended this fragment for anyone to understand that a story has sub categories, and these sub categories are displayed as child nodes.

Is the relation between child nodes, sub categories and a story clear and unambiguous?
How else could I construct the fragment so that it could be used as a subject of a sentence?

The story and the sub category are just terms, which may not make any sense to you but they do for those whom it's designated to.

The prefix "sub" is normally followed by a hyphen, or prepended without a hyphen or space, i.e. "sub-category" or "subcategory".

score 5 · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-27 09:29:05Z

up vote 5 down vote accepted

I would prefer

child nodes representing a story's sub-categories

or maybe something like

child nodes of a story representing this story's sub-categories

In your construction "representing" could refer back to "a story".

But more likely I would not use this phrase like this. Rather I would introduce child nodes in a dedicated sentence and refer back to the definition:

A story has sub-categories, and these categories are displayed as child nodes.

aforementioned child nodes or even only child nodes

edited Oct 27 '10 at 9:29

answered Oct 27 '10 at 8:29

malach

	The prefix "sub" is normally followed by a hyphen, or prepended without a hyphen or space, i.e. "sub-category" or "subcategory". – Steve Melnikoff Oct 27 '10 at 9:24
	@Steve - thank you. Maybe direct this comment to the OP too? – malach Oct 27 '10 at 9:30
	While more sentences almost always provides less ambiguity, comparing the question with his previous one (on making compound sentences), I believe that the first two examples would suit him better than the third. – stevendesu Nov 14 '10 at 17:12

1 Answer