Spring cleaning time has arrived. This afternoon my husband tackled the garage because he was tired of not being able to find tools when he needed them. Our garage is more of a storage unit than anything else. If you don’t know where to put something, it lands on a pile in there. A major part of bringing order to the chaos is deciding what to keep and what to throw out. Do you keep the bottom tray for a microwave you no longer possess on the off-chance it might possibly be useful? Or do you commit to the decluttering process and get rid of the deadweight so you can easily locate the important items?
In a similar way, writing is often weighed down by useless language that contributes little to the meaning and obscures the important information. One quick way to improve your writing is to declutter your sentences.
Be concise—eliminate unnecessary words
“How long does it have to be?” That is usually the first thing students want to know when I hand out a writing assignment. I used to cringe at that question because I know that writing flows best when it isn’t reaching for a word count. On the other hand, it helps to have a guideline so you know how large the scope of your paper needs to be. A 500-word essay on Mark Twain is going to require a different approach than a 5000-word research paper. But if I give a word count, I know that I’m going to get sentences that are padded with a bunch of unnecessary words.
Occasionally, I get a student who has too much to say and needs a word count for restriction, but in my experience, most students are struggling to generate content. For example, say they’ve been given an assignment that is supposed to be 300 to 500 words long. That seems like a nice range. But inevitably, after counting it up three times, they find they only have 270 words. Since they have not met the minimum requirement, what they should do is either come up with another point to discuss—after all, they are a LONG way from exceeding the maximum word count—or develop an existing point in more detail.
Unfortunately, students rarely choose these options. Instead, they look for places where they can add extra words that contribute nothing to the meaning and often detract from the clarity of the essay. “It took a long time” becomes “It took a very, very long time.” Why say concisely, “he was perplexed” when you get closer to the assigned word count by saying, “he was at a loss about what to do”? Thus, the essay becomes populated with extraneous language to meet a minimum word count.
One easy way to improve any essay is to eliminate filler words. Obviously, there are occasions when these words might be appropriate. However, the majority of the time, they add little meaning and obscure the content. Here is a list of some of the biggest offenders:
- quite
- seriously
- totally
- suddenly
- sort of
- essentially
- completely
- absolutely
- virtually
- literally
- at all times
- each and every
- really
- extremely
- simply
- pretty
- very
- just
- actually
- basically
In addition to reducing filler words, students can improve the quality of sentences by choosing precise verbs to convey meaning, such as the use of “perplexed” in the above example. Also, beware of –ly adverbs. Instead, choose a strong, precise verb that makes the adverb unnecessary. (For example, “he ran quickly” is better phrased as “he sprinted.”)
Cleaning out the garage is going to take much longer than one afternoon. However, students can quickly spruce up their sentences if they throw out the filler words.
Are you looking for other ways to help students improve their writing skills? I’ve put together a free resource called “5 Mistakes Students Make in Academic Writing.” In it, I explain the strategies I’ve used with my own students to help them write more concisely.