Clarity

I would say most people have dreaded having to write essays for school ever since elementary. Looking back, I remember they always had to be a certain length or contain a certain number of pages done in a certain size of font. The only good thing seemed to be that you could type them double-spaced. I would often add useless words and redundant phrases in an effort to obtain the minimum page requirements. This type of thing is exactly what the text is talking about when it mentions redundancy and wordiness. Use of the word “very” comes to mind when I think of wordiness, and the lecture included other intensifiers that should be avoided such as “really”, “extremely”, “severely”, etc. The text gives examples of redundancy such as “end result”, “repeat again”, and “completely destroyed”. Making these mistakes hinders the clarity and conciseness of your writing, making it difficult on the reader. I have found this week that you can add a lot to a sentence by writing it in active voice and choosing appropriate words. Chapter nine in the book gives a lot of good instruction on what not to do if you want to be a clear and concise writer. I suppose what you should do, then, is the opposite of what the book says. Avoid jargon, redundancy, wordiness, etc. Make your sentences easy to read and easy to understand.

For my grammar error this week I thought I would mention a certain banker who I came across. It was actually a co-worker of mine who works in a different department. He might as well have been speaking a foreign language because just about every other word that came out of his mouth was jargon that I had no clue about. Although this was not something I had read, it showed me how the use of jargon can be completely confusing for people.