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

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.

Did I miss any prepositions obligatory for sentences that complex?

If you feel like it's not the right way to use English anyway, please see questions

Constructing compound sentences

and

How to rephrase a sentence?.

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Grammatically this sentence parses. No missed prepositions. There are two indefinite articles that might be superfluous:

One of the items that needed further development was research on child nodes...

And yes, I do think that this sentence needs rephrasing (rule of brevity). See my answers on the corresponding questions.

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  • Well, I don't understand articles. So far I have only seen rules telling that an article in front of singular form of a noun is a must, unless you are talking about it in general. – Eugene Strizhok Oct 27 '10 at 19:45
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    @Eug In the case of 'research' above you aren't exactly referring to research as a thing, or a singular event, but rather as an on-going or collective activity. For 'development' you can get away with or without the article since you might have been referring to development as an activity [where you would delete] or development as a singular change [where you'd keep]. However, eliminating the article simplifies the lengthy opening clause. – mfg Oct 27 '10 at 20:14
  • @mfg: Thanks! I understand the rule, but I can't really feel what is an activity and what is not. – Eugene Strizhok Oct 30 '10 at 15:25
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An item for further development is research on [child nodes of a story (re-word?)] that display sub-categories' updates whenever the list of sub-categories is changed on the edit page for stories.

As far as I can tell this might be a better phrased articulation of what you're saying. I take it to mean that:

  • A list of X [subcategories] exists,
  • Somewhere else, updates to X are displayed,
  • Changes to X (or the list of x) are related to "child nodes"
  • and More research is called for regarding that system (though I don't know what part needs research).

Here's another option for the front end:

An item for further [research/development] is how [child nodes of a story (re-word?)] display updates to the sub-categories whenever the list of sub-categories is changed on the edit page for stories.

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