Except in special circumstances, it would probably never occur to anyone to write anything like this:

Mary, a nursing home resident I like a lot, was born in August. Her birthday is on the 18th of the month, and the year she was born was 1920.

A clear-thinking person would write, instead:

Mary, a nursing home resident I like a lot, was born on August 18, 1920.

Sometimes, however, writers scatter bits of related information all over a sentence. In most cases, the result is not good:

Mary founded the women’s studies department after becoming a professor at Central University, but earlier, before she was married, she was a professional dancer and earned a degree in music in hopes of being a concert pianist.

Putting the different parts of Mary’s life in chronological order will certainly help straighten this sentence out. Readers expect chronological events to be presented in time order. But even after the time order is straightened out, a couple of problems remain:

As a young woman, Mary was a professional dancer and earned a degree in music in hopes of being a concert pianist, but after she married, she became a professor at Central University, founding its women’s studies department.

First, most of the sentence is about Mary’s professional life, so the mention of her marriage introduces an idea that’s not closely related to the other ideas — or if it is, we haven’t been told how it’s related. The sentence would be better off without the mention of the marriage. Second, the sentence seems to say that she danced in hopes of being a concert pianist. The flip side of keeping related ideas together is keeping unrelated ideas apart.

As a young woman, Mary was a professional dancer, and she earned a degree in music in hopes of being a concert pianist, but ultimately she became a professor at Central University, founding its women’s studies department.

Chronology is, of course, not the only possible organizing principle. In the following draft of the sentence about Mary, the writer is focusing on relationships between ideas (which led her to decide to add new information and leave out unrelated facts):

Mary was born on the day the United States ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote — and this coincidence, she says jokingly, must have inspired her career at Central University as a professor and the founder of the women’s studies department.

Keep related ideas together all the way down to the micro level. Put modifiers next to what they’re modifying. Dropping them in carelessly looks just that — careless. Misplaced modifiers can even mislead readers.

Limiting modifiers such as almost, barely, hardly, merely, nearly, only, and simply are particularly liable to make trouble. Compare these sentences:

He almost lost all his friends.

He lost almost all his friends.

The first sentence says he didn’t lose his friends; he almost lost them. The second sentence says he did lose almost all his friends.

Only I thought we needed money.

I only thought we needed money.

I thought we needed only money.

The first sentence means that no one but the writer thought money was needed. The second sentence means that the writer merely imagined the need for money. The third sentence means that the writer thought that nothing but money was needed.