Sentence Structure for Writers (2017)

Am I missing something here or does the very first example break this article’s own point?

“It was nice of John and Mary to come and visit us the other day,” is 8 words before the verb come.

“For John and Mary to come and visit us the other day was nice,” is only five, focused solely on the subject with no additional information (how the author felt about their visit)

Yet personally the second one reads easier for me, so I guess that reinforces the point to me specifically? Although I agree it’s unusual.

It’s not about the verb. It’s about the point. The “weight” of the parts. Here, the point was that it “was nice” that they came visit.

The main verb in the sentence in both cases is "was". "come" is in a subclause, and it's that subclause that is the "weightier" part of the sentence that the author says should come later in the sentence.

Incidentally, the two sentences don't really say the same thing -- the first is saying John and Mary did something nice for the speaker, and the second is so weirdly phrased it's hard to figure out what it's intending to say but it's hard to interpret it as having the same meaning as the first. It would need to end "...was nice of them" to be that, I think.

Why is the clunky construct “to come and visit” even used?

“It was nice of John and Mary to visit us the other day”

Come and visit makes it sound like they traveled to be there, where just visit might be the neighbor stopping by. It’s subtle and ambiguous, but I do see valid use for come and visit.

You can drill down more. The come in "come and visit" is a colloquial redundancy and the other day is mostly redundant, unless they had another visit that was more recent. "It was nice of john and mary to visit/john and mary's visit was nice."

This makes the difference between the two sentences very pronounced.

The intent is that something was nice.

English speakers prefer to say it was nice of <very long phrase>. Instead of <very long phrase> was nice. The <very long phrase> is John and Mary to come and visit us the other day.

My theory is that by keeping the subject and verb short, it has less cognitive load on the listener as they know early where the conversation is going. In other words bottom line up front.

For example, this sounds strange to my ear. The right honorable gentleman who had served in the US House of Representatives and had just been floated for an even higher ranking office has been dogged by accusations of sexual impropriety.

I would phrase it as. Although dogged by accusations of sexual impropriety, the right honorable gentleman has just been floated for an even higher ranking office after serving in the US House of Representatives.

I believe it is for emphasis. Instead of a big deal. It is a big ginormous deal that John and Mary would come all the way from their country estate to visit us their poor relations in our humble house.

the sentence should be completely rewritten:

"I enjoyed John and Mary's visit yesterday."

The tyranny of active voice.

nah i just know how to write a good sentence, active verbs are only one tool. you're mistaken if you think the original sentence is better.