How to Fight “Wordiness”?
When writing essays, lots of students regularly face a problem of length requirements. It seems to be difficult to stop a flight of fancy and get back to Earth where imagination is limited by a strict number of words. People simply don’t know how to cut their writings and not forfeit the narrative key points. Well, let us teach you!
Have you ever caught yourself writing sentences that are far too long? Do you often forget the initial idea at the beginning of your sentence upon reaching its end? If yes, you may suffer from what is called “wordiness” — one of the biggest writer’s sins. Wordiness occurs when the author just can’t stop using too many words and constructions, thereby breaking all the possible limits. It can seriously affect not only the quantitative side of the essay (which is pretty clear) but also distort and decrease the quality of writing, getting author bogged down in a maze of abstractness and vagueness.
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Weeding It Out
According to “A Professor’s Guide to Writing Essays” by Dr. Jacob Neumann, students mostly complain that essays lose their emotional essence or become less original after editing. This claim doesn’t make any real sense as a rich experience of editing shows that everything can be easily removed if needed without getting rid of the essence. Moreover, essay contents might appear to get even stronger with the help of editorial check! At www.the-essays.com, they even read and cut students’ essays on a daily basis and confirm that none of those become weaker after undergoing the procedure of abridgment. Whereas at cheapwritingservice.com, they have an originality department. Which is a team of experienced editors that evaluates the degree of articles’ uniqueness.
In order not to mill the wind, we suggest that you follow certain word count requirements and address the question within the limitations, but don’t worry if you fail to do so. Here, we’d like to present you eight simple ways to make your stories shorter without loss of the quality based on the book “The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need: A One-Stop Source for Every Writing Assignment” (by Susan Thurman and Larry Shea):
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1. Reduce the number of your favorite prepositions “of,” “at,” “in.” This appears to be the easiest way to reach the desirable word count.
2. Delete all the excessive adverbs. Don’t be afraid to take them away from the text as the adverbs just express the degree without affecting the whole meaning of a sentence (this also refers to “-ly” and “-ry” words).
3. Eliminate the endless “that.” You might be positively surprised by how the absence of this word makes an essay more concise.
4. Get parenthetical phrases. Those introductory constructions turn your text into a heavyweight, enriching it with commas. This essay belongs to you, right? Therefore, there’s no need to repeat the obvious things (in fact, it’s true), demonstrate your confidence (to be honest, frankly speaking) or count the things (first of all, secondly).
5. Erase auxiliary verbs “be,” “do,” “have.” Replace them with the verb forms that sound stronger and simpler (use “He will do” instead of “He is going to do”).
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6. Avoid “to be” constructions: it’s better to use “She works hard” than “She is a hard-working person.” In this case, adverbs have the right to exist for the sake of shortening.
7. Transform certain nouns into verbs: saying “I conclude” is better than “Let me draw a conclusion.”
8. Actively use contractions. It makes the style of your writing more easy-going.
This piece of advice may be helpful in the situations where text requires light surface correction which can be successfully completed by author’s own efforts. But, if you’re sick and tired of editing, the deadline is coming inexorably, but nothing seems to change, you need a professional and unbiased opinion. Just send the latest draft to BuyCheapEssays for a comprehensive step-by-step review and editorial proofreading. Our trained editors are ready to guide you through your drafts, making them more precise and reader-friendly!
