Revising for Conciseness - A Brief Interactive Tutorial with Excercises
Introduction
What is Concision?
- The quality of being brief in form, but comprehensive in scope.
- Concise quality; brevity, terseness (Oxford American College Dictionary)
Why be Concise?
- To use the most effective words to communicate your ideas
- To avoid redundancy, wordiness, and awkward sentence structure
- To focus on the strength of your argument rather than the length of your paper
- More is not better. Writing a long paper simply to write a long paper results in a weakened argument and a needlessly wordy paper.
- While it is necessary to demonstrate the soundness of your ideas to your teacher, the length of your paper does not determine the strength of your paper.
What Are Some Suggestions for Achieving Conciseness?
- Replace Vague Words with Concrete, Specific Language
- Eliminate Redundancy
- Avoid Needless Artistic Flourishes
- Use Thesaurus Cautiously
- Use Active Voice Instead of Passive Voice
- Maintain Parallel Structure
- Eliminate Wordiness
- Avoid Jargon when Possible
**Please note: There may not be one correct answer.
When appropriate, this tutorial will show you one or more possible revisions.
You will not receive a score for this tutorial.**
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