Chapter 9 introduces what I thought this entire editing class would be about. While we’ve learned a lot more than how to cut down wordy sentences, this has been, by far, my favorite chapter. I absolutely love this side of editing. Clarity and conciseness is something I just recently learned about. High school essays always consisted of flowery words used only to meet the minimum word count. That style of writing became a habit for me and I still really enjoy it from time to time(as you can see from my blog posts). As much as I love it, flowery words and sentences just don’t fly in academic and professional settings.
Clearly, I love using wordy sentences. It’s one of my weaknesses but also one of the things I so thoroughly enjoy about free-writing. Writing academically drains my creativity at times so it’s always fun to write a blog and just let the words flow how I want them to.
Both the “clarity” and the “conciseness” assignment opened my eyes. Sure, sometimes the exaggerated sentences sound better to the writer, but the reader typically wants quick, short, understandable sentences. Word choice is so important in academic and professional style writing. When people read printed or virtual media, they expect the hard facts and they expect them now. Time, precious as is it, cannot be wasted trudging through meaningless and unnecessary words.
I tend to write wordy sentences too (especially in my blog posts). It's just so easy to do. I'm going to have to work on using less unnecessary words.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this chapter as well. Here I am, one sentence into my comment of your post and I've already added an intensifier (really), something that we should try and avoid. Well at least I recognize this and know to make a conscious effort to avoid them.
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