Not only can wordiness overlabor readers, it can also cause clarity problems and lead to bad writing habits. Ppt wordiness powerpoint presentation free to download. Readers are also very adept at filling in the nonessential aspects of a narrative, as in the fourth example. Eliminating wordiness exercise 3 revise the following passage, avoiding wordiness and undesirable repetition. Grammargrounds grammar education is a free, comprehensive site with instruction, videos, quizzes, and more. Always consider readers while drafting and revising writing. Wordiness also tends to occur when were struggling to clarify our ideas or when were tired and not thinking clearly. Calvin sun looks at how eliminating just a few superfluous phrases can tighten up your writing and give it more punch.
Redundancy and wordiness grammar video by brightstorm. There are several reasons that wordiness impacts clarity. Of course, there is a danger in being too economical in your use of words. One easy way to control wordiness is to limit or eliminate the use of filler words.
Eliminating excessive, confusing, or redundant words from sentences can oftentimes make meanings much clearer. This quiz was prepared by michael dolan, a student in professor karyn holliss tutor training course at villanova university. Return to writing resources download a pdf of this resource. Avoid lengthy expressions that make a sentence wordy. Avoid wordiness by using the four strategies for eliminating wordiness below. Phrases in green have been marked to show passive voice. Why eliminating wordiness is so important for your essay. Fix a wordy sentence by removing unnecessary phrases, changing verb tenses, and choosing better adjectives.
Verbosity excess word use is often a result of idea generation, and wordy sentences and paragraphs, especially in early drafts. Essay writing service of the highest quality, our essay writing service provides custom papers written from, we are a cheap, fast, and reliable essay writing service. Conciseness in writing redundancy in writing hurley write. Shakespeare hamlet, act 2, scene ii, lines 9698 the world has only so much spaceeven the world of rhetoric. Fiske analyzes the excessive wordiness in common usage and draws up an alphabetical compendium of. Keeping your paper concise strengthens its clarity and gives it a smooth flow. Successful globalization depends on factors that involve culture more than economics.
Reducing wordiness when writing in conventional western academic style, say what you have to say and be done. Of course you have to pour it all out during the brainstorming and discovery stages, but, when its time to really edit, aim for clarity and focus on the sentence level. Look for ways to modify the structure of your sentences in order to reduce wordiness. A sentence is too wordy if it can be tightened without loss of meaning. Wordy because the fluid, which was brown and poisonous, was dumped into the river, the company that was negligent had to shut down. Wordiness can seriously detract from the coherency and quality of your writing and will likely frustrate your readers. Eliminating wordiness although adding words helps fill pages, information that doesn. The student was worried about her test grade because she had not. A major problem with much writing is wordinessusing several words when one will do. Avoid overusing it is, there is, and there are weak expletives at the beginning of sentences.
Eliminate wordiness worksheet answer key directions. Concise writing uses the most effective words in a piece of writing, making the paper. Wordiness in writing is like tossing chalk dust into the cookie batter because you have no flour, a filler that will be easily detectible at first bite. Wordiness occurs when a writer uses more words than necessary to express a thought. Fiske analyzes the excessive wordiness in common usage and draws up an alphabetical compendium of wordy phrases and more concise alternatives. Many local farmers plan to attend next fridays meeting. The beautiful, majestic, breathtaking city of rome was visited by many tourists from america during the hot summer. Nov 03, 2015 wordiness, wordiness, wordiness list therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, i will be brief. Revise these sentences to state their meaning in fewer words.
We all want to communicate clearly, but wordy sentence constructions can mask the best of ideas. View 73 2pm wordiness 1612 from ae 20c at university of california, irvine. Wordiness occurs when a writer uses words or phrases that seem to modify a noun but do not actually add to the meaning of the sentence. As you can see, constructing effective sentences is one sure way of improving your writing immediately. In fact, being too wordy can cause many problems in your writing. Strategies for reducing wordiness what is wordiness. Revising to eliminate wordiness guilford college writing. This product contains the powerpoint, lesson and activities with worksheets. Plutarch, a greek philosopher and biographer who lived and wrote at the end of the first century, tells us at one point in parallel lives, a story about a party that took place long ago. Eliminating wordiness exercise 3 revise the following passage. Eliminating wordiness and redundancy is an important skill in writing. If passages explain or describe details that would already be obvious to readers, delete or reword them.
Use these resources to study what you know about identifying and reducing wordiness. Exercise 16 1 wordy sentences edit the following sentences for wordiness. Avoid passive voice, needless repetition, and wordy phrases and clauses. Eliminating this problem may require moving words around in the sentence.
Avoiding redundancy and eliminating wordiness will create clear, concise writing. Read each example and think about how you could revise the sentence to remove phrasing that adds wordiness. Wordiness means stating ideas, concepts, andor thoughts in an excessively lengthy, redundant, and verbose manner. Lines have been drawn under the wordy constructions. Wordiness is the tendency to use more words than necessary. Techniques for reducing wordiness try not to use i and we in a formal paper. Get rid of them and pick words with force, perhaps. In an effective sentence, every word serves a purpose and occupies the right spot. If a sentence has words that are not necessary to carry the meaning, those words are unneeded and can be removed to reduce wordiness. By writing clearly and concisely, you will get straight to your point, so your audience can easily comprehend it. Below are 10 examples of wordiness, with recommendations on reducing it. By eliminating wordiness, you can clarify your meaning. Exercise 21 edit the following sentences for wordiness.
The reason that general lee invaded pennsylvania in june 1863was to draw the army of the potomac away from richmond. Youll answer quiz questions on things like the methods of reducing wordiness and. Exercises for eliminating wordiness brought to you by the purdue university online writing lab at for strategies to improve conciseness in your writing, see methods of eliminating wordiness at directions. Edit your sentences, keeping a close eye on each word, and ask yourself if each word is contributing to the meaning of the sentence. In this writing exercise, students are given a series of sentences and asked to rewrite them to eliminate wordy phrases and clauses, repetition and passive voice. Burning words succinct writing effectively engraves are good. Wordiness grammarly academic guides at walden university. Eliminating wordiness lewis university writing center.
Wordy because the fluid, which was brown and poisonous, was dumped into the river. Wordiness, wordiness, wordiness list therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, i will be brief. Wordiness often occurs when writers use repetitive or redundant filler words to reach a certain page length. Writing concisely is one way to capture and retain readers interest.
Now that you know why its important to eliminate wordiness, and now that you know how to do so, its time to write some words of your ownor as the case may be, delete some of those unnecessary words. Eliminating wordiness 1 sentence linguistics justice scribd. Getting rid of so called wordiness and redundancy may work a dream and drop your. This can make sentences confusing, obscuring meaning, slowing down the reader, and distracting from the overall message. Eliminating superfluous words and unnecessary repetition the following example of wordiness was the opening paragraph of a high school students composition about an overnight hike. This was because she had not studied, and the exam was difficult. The english teacher looking for tools, the student looking for some extra help, or the new english speaker hoping to master the language will find what he or she is looking for here. The paper is obviously yours, so you dont need to use phrases such as i think, i believe, or it seems to me.
Remove unnecessary words and rewrite the sentences, but dont change the main idea. Combining sentences and cutting superfluous wording in the process is a great method for not only eliminating these issues, but also producing more complex and compound sentences. Eliminating wordiness this quiz was prepared by michael dolan, a student in professor karyn holliss tutor training course at villanova university. Avoiding wordiness software free download avoiding. Try to eliminate redundant statements and useless phrases from the sentence. Omit unnecessary words by using a who does what construction.
A large number of people enjoy reading murder mysteries regularly. In your effort to write well, you will profit from studying some ways to make your writing more concise. Eliminating wordiness exercise 1 purdue writing lab. Then check out the suggested revisions to each sentence. Eliminating wordiness return to writing resources download a pdf of this resource. There are several techniques that can help you learn to write clearly and concisely. A lesswordy way to describe wordiness is using too many words. Regardless of the reason for padded writing, we can achieve concise writing if we incorporate several strategies during the writing process and if were aware of the individual patterns of wordiness typical of our own writing. Although adding words helps fill pages, information that doesn.
Heres a few more resources to help you with eliminating wordiness. Omit which or that altogether when possible, and turn explanations into adjectives. Conciseness and eliminating wordiness ku writing center. A lawyer can often improve his or her writing considerably just by paring unnecessary words.
Successful globalization depends more on culture than. This is controlling wordiness and writing concisely, section 17. Editing for wordiness words are like acid the more theyre condensed, the more they burn. Below, we suggest several ways to help you avoid wordiness and increase quality. Writing resources eliminating wordiness hamilton college. The goal of this handout is to help you to find and eliminate unnecessary words or phrases in your writing during the editing stage of the writing process. Techniques for reducing wordinessnew macalester college. Perhaps theyve learned to pad their writing to meet a word count for a college paper, theyre struggling to find the right words, or they think that adding words makes their writing sound more formal or that their readers expect it. Wordiness wordiness most often occurs when a writer wants to sound more professional, academic, or complex. In fact, the author who is frugal with words not only writes a more readable manuscript but also increases the chances that the manuscript will be accepted for publication. Nov 18, 2015 as you can see, constructing effective sentences is one sure way of improving your writing immediately. January 21, 2020 may 15, 2020 all appointments will be offered online due to covid19 campus closure the university of texas at austin pcl 2. You can manage cluttered sentences by eliminating repetitive ideas, removing repeated words, and rewording to eliminate unneeded words. General lee invaded pennsylvania in june 1863 to draw the army of the potomac away from richmond.
The english teacher looking for tools, the student looking for some extra help, or the new english speaker hoping to master the language will find what he or she is. Deleting these words, thereby reducing wordiness, leads to a more concise paper. Tips and tricks for eliminating wordiness and redundancy include 1 eliminating passive voice, 2 identifying and eliminating repetitive words, and 3 checking for prepositional and appositive phrases and making sure theyre relative. A free powerpoint ppt presentation displayed as a flash slide show on id. Revising to eliminate wordiness sometimes you have to murder your darlings. As a rule, these people are not themselves murderers, nor would these people really ever enjoy seeing someone commit an actual. Eliminate words that explain the obvious or provide excessive detail. Exercise 1 worksheet is suitable for 5th 9th grade. Here are some tips to help keep your writing to the point. Using excessive prepositions consecutively within a sentence is known as a preposition pileup or preposition choochoo train.
1065 1059 353 1428 1252 491 686 250 1251 853 485 921 1530 1518 753 704 997 1301 224 579 1001 1563 247 1243 1177 1002 428 136 207 102