Wordiness definition of wordiness by the free dictionary. Cliffsnotes study guides are written by real teachers and professors, so no matter what youre studying, cliffsnotes can ease your homework headaches and help you score high on exams. Wordiness can seriously detract from the coherency and quality of your writing and frustrate your readers. Fiske analyzes the excessive wordiness in common usage and draws up an alphabetical compendium of wordy phrases and more concise alternatives. Our rough drafts are full of extra words, because thats the way most of us speak and think. Successful college writing download ebook pdf, epub, tuebl. Wordiness wordiness most often occurs when a writer wants to sound more professional, academic, or complex. Wordiness is taking more words than necessary to make your point. A student s companion for successful college writing. Writing resources eliminating wordiness hamilton college.
Writing papers in the biological sciences 6th edition. Academic skills wordiness activity wordiness revise these sentences to state their meaning in fewer words. Redundancies often slip in during drafting and revision, but they can be difficult to identify. The elements of style use active voice and strong verbs. Unnecessary words come in all shapes and sizes, and its difficult to put them into distinct categories.
Grammargrounds grammar education is a free, comprehensive site with instruction, videos, quizzes, and more. Here are two websites with full blown explanations of introduction methods and several excellent examples. I might add, it should be pointed out, it is interesting to note that how many sentences begin with these dreary clauses announcing what the writer is. You are wordy when you are redundant, such as when you write, last may during the spring, or little kittens or very unique. Clauses reduced to participial or infinitive phrases. Sometimes, some business writers clutter their sentences and paragraphs with words, phrases, and expressions that needlessly distract the reader. In an effective sentence, every word serves a purpose and occupies the right spot. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same.
Eliminating wordiness this quiz was prepared by michael dolan, a student in professor karyn holliss tutor training course at villanova university. Examples of gerunds include playing, jumping, and singing. Avoid overusing it is, there is, and there are weak expletives at the beginning. Evidence from around the world increasingly suggests that increasing technology use in classrooms is having a negative effect on student outcomes. A short film about avoiding wordiness for english 328 with professor krause at eastern michigan university. To learn more or modifyprevent the use of cookies, see our cookie policy and privacy policy. One way to make writing more clear is to cut out unnecessary words and phrases. Each document below is given on a web page in this site html or as a download in. When reducing wordiness, first look for repetition, which occurs when words or ideas are repeated. Wordiness for the writer also means using long words when there are good short ones available, using uncommon words when familiar ones are handy, using words that look. One easy way to avoid wordiness is to limit or eliminate the use of filler words.
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. Eliminate unnecessary determiners and modifiers balancing the budget by friday is. Verbosity excess word use is often a result of idea generation, and wordy sentences and paragraphs, especially in early drafts. Wordiness, on the other hand, is about how much more attention the writing draws to its words, instead of to its ideas. How to avoid wordiness linkedin learning, formerly. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. Avoiding wordiness wordiness causes readers to lose interest in the material, and professors may think students are attempting to increase the length of a work without providing enough information. Another common complaint about ilo writing is its verbosity or wordiness. Click download or read online button to get a student s companion for successful college writing book now. This tendency is often excused by stating the need for formality in many documents, especially those involving governments. The paper is obviously yours, so you dont need to use phrases such as i think, i believe, or it seems to me. This site is like a library, use search box in the widget to get ebook that you want. More than a matter of word count, wordiness involves using unnecessary words andor phrases that add length to sentences while making only negligible differences to their meaning.
Avoiding wordiness california state university, long beach. Jun 21, 2015 in addition to the common wordy phrases, gerunds also tend to signal wordiness errors on the sat. Created and maintained by faculty and staff at purdue university, this site has some of the internets most exhaustive and credible resources on effective writing for various subjects. Techniques for reducing wordinessnew macalester college.
Below, we suggest several ways to help you reduce wordiness and increase quality. The beautiful, majestic, breathtaking city of rome was visited by many tourists from american during the hot summer. The ability to write concisely is highly valued in most disciplines. Click download or read online button to get successful college writing book now.
Download the files the instructor uses to teach the course. Avoiding wordiness software free download avoiding. 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. I recently started rereading william zinssers on writing well.
The beautiful, majestic, breathtaking city of rome was visited by many tourists from america during the hot summer. Exercises 1 and 2 contain wordy sentences while exercise 3 is an extended passage that requires revision. Wordiness, wordiness, wordiness list therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, i will be brief. Wordiness occurs when a writer uses more words than necessary to express a thought. Wordiness also tends to occur when were struggling to clarify our ideas or when were tired and not thinking clearly. This paper aims to describe and c ompare the phenomena of wordiness and conciseness in english and persian. Eliminating wordiness exercise 1 purdue writing lab. More often though, the wordiness is caused by falling into what is called formula writing.
Click to download or view the activity i worksheet as a pdf. To reduce wordiness, he implores the writer to remove needless words and phrases. How close do students get to the goal of 89 words in the practice sample. In addition to the common wordy phrases, gerunds also tend to signal wordiness errors on the sat. Download successful college writing or read online books in pdf, epub, tuebl, and mobi format.
This video explains how to avoid writing wordy sentences by focusing on verbs. White wrote this introduction for the 1979 edition. Avoid overusing it is, there is, and there are weak expletives at the beginning of sentences. Revise these sentences to state their meaning in fewer words.
This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat. Calvin sun looks at how eliminating just a few superfluous phrases can tighten up. There are several reasons that wordiness impacts clarity. Unnecessary words and phrases often can be detected when text is read aloud. It may take the form of redundant expressions or phrases. Some examples do contain instances of informal language, so consider how the strategy being illustrated would operate using formal language. The book was known on the campus in those days as the little book, with the stress on the word little.
Youll answer quiz questions on things like the methods of reducing wordiness and. Wordiness read over your compositions, and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. Many local farmers plan to attend next fridays meeting. Avoid wordiness by reducing clauses to phrases, and phrases to single words. Gerunds are verbs that function as nouns and end in ing. Pdf clashes of conciseness and wordiness between english and. Avoid passive voice, needless repetition, and wordy phrases and clauses. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences. Wordiness and redundancy comma splice sentences 2 worksheets grades 37. Follow along and learn by watching, listening and practicing. Purdues owl site has three separate exercises that can be printed out. Return to writing resources download a pdf of this resource. Nothing is more confusing to the user than long, complex sentences containing multiple phrases and clauses.
Strategies for technical communication in the workplace, mla. Wordiness is not the same as rambling, which is a coherency issue. Based on the acclaimed technical communication by lannon and gurak, strategies for technical communication in the workplace prepares students for workplace writing through a clear and concise writing style, useful checklists, practical applications, numerous sample documents, and coverage of technology and global issues. This product contains the powerpoint, lesson and activities with worksheets. Used to provide additional practice assessment selfassessment. Nevertheless, the following rule will call to your attention to some helpful methods of avoiding wordiness. Your trusted guide for writing and researching in biology. 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. Fix a wordy sentence by removing unnecessary phrases, changing verb tenses, and choosing better.
Write naturally without straining after a literary effect. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. The link above will take you to what is considered by many to be the classic online resource for questions on writing. Eliminating this problem may require moving words around in the sentence. Nov 03, 2014 this video explains how to avoid writing wordy sentences by focusing on verbs. Writing mechanics cstw center for the study and teaching.
Techniques for reducing wordiness try not to use i and we in a formal paper. Parallelism sentence structure university of saskatchewan avoiding wordiness university of saskatchewan. Wordy sentences use too many useless words that clutter writing. Eliminate wordiness worksheet answer key directions. Pdf this study compares verbs and verb collocation patterns in english and. As strunk and white tell us in the elements of style 4th ed. Redundant information should be avoided in order to reduce wordiness in your essay writing. A sentence is too wordy if it can be tightened without loss of meaning. Use these resources to study what you know about identifying and reducing wordiness. Avoid lengthy expressions that make a sentence wordy. Avoiding wordiness software dictionary of concise writing v. Many students unconsciously form the habit of repetition, especially when writing long papers.
185 1480 132 360 924 481 1166 1000 428 1324 1372 892 814 1138 1277 1369 957 1468 1568 842 822 478 636 1443 270 1408 1069 1464 824 920 120 774 43 1438 1168 1415 1217 1392