Ross Woods, rev. May '19, Feb, May '20 Feb. '24
précis?
In this section, style
means the conventions of good written expression. Most of these skills are simple and almost mechanical. Précis
is the art of writing concisely, that is, taking something and saying exactly the same thing in much fewer words. If you edit well, you'll be correcting style and doing précis. Poor sentence style refers to complicated or unwieldy arrangements that are grammatically correct but unpleasant to read.
(In writing, style
also has two other meanings: 1. The uniquely individual way a person expresses him/ or herself. 2. The rules for typing and layout.)
Economize on your words. As you think about your topic and find things that need to be said, you won't need to pad it. For example, you can delete quotes that don't add anything, and remove padding like:
In a very few cases, saying the same thing twice with different words is a good way to make your message clear. Usually, however, saying the same thing twice means that you have more words than thoughts. In this example, you can safely delete the second sentence:
I noticed that all the first bunch were very thin. None of that group were fat.
Just cross the padding out. It says nothing and only hides the point you really want to make.
Here's an example that deletes other extra verbiage:
If you only state that something exists, you aren't usually saying very much at all. The main culprits are There is
, There are,
There was
, and There were.
The most common problem is easy to fix. For example:
Less obvious ones are the words exist
and occur
. Delete this lot from your vocab and find proper verbs that actually say something. For example:
Ordinary people break out in spots when they get sick, but writers break out in extra commas. The way to fix unnecessary extra commas is to go through the manuscript deleting as many commas as possible and recasting sentences so that they flow well without the extra commas.
Simply your language, even if it uses far fewer words. "Gobbldygook" is the use of complicated verbiage to disguise relatively simple thoughts, and some long paragraphs of gobbledygook work better as simple sentences of fifteen or twenty words. Unfortunately, writing gobbledygook is usually easier than thinking.
Use short sentences whenever you can, usually no more than fifteen words. If a sentence gets too long and complicated, split it into several short sentences.
If sentences are too long to read easily, the solution is to limit your sentence length or your readers will go nuts and not want to read what you have to say and might even get lost halfway through, especially if you either change topic, which is quite likely, or say other things in extra clauses, and they might feel deceived if they find that you are hiding important points somewhere in the middle.
Being grammatically correct doesn't mean that something is good technical style because a piece of writing can be quite difficult to read and your readers won’t always like it and some will sometimes possibly stop reading altogether, but of course not all of them will, so it’s a good idea to have good style as well as grammar and other things like spelling, layout and punctuation, but I should emphasize here that style can also mean personal style, which is often a good thing that develops with experience, but it's altogether a very different thing, and if you’ve read this far, you can see that being grammatically correct is not enough to write well.
Vary your sentence length; lots of short sentences together is also quite annoying:
All sentences are the same length. It feels like machine gun fire. Your language is in short bursts. This drives your readers nuts. They get tired easily. They don't want to read your writing.
Parallelism means repeat the rhythm in the grammar. This will make your writing much better. Politicians often deliberately use parallelism in speeches and public comments to make them simpler and more memorable.
Look at several simple examples:
The passive voice is nearly useless and instantly bores your readers. The active voice always sounds better. Your tutor should probably ban it altogether for now. Check out these examples:
| Passive voice version (Bad) |
Active voice version (Good) |
|---|---|
| The food was eaten by us. | We ate the food. |
| The letter was written by the fat lady. | The fat lady wrote the letter. |
| The water was drunk by us. | We drank some water. |
| A good time was had by all. | We all had a very good time. |
The passive voice also hides the identity of whoever is actually doing it, a tactic sometimes used by children to avoid resposibility. (The milk was spilt.) To make it even worse, the passive voice makes any bad writing even more boring:
In a few cases, however, passive voice is sometimes unavoidable e.g. to maintain objectivity in some kinds of scientific writing where who is doing it
is irrelevant or when writing guidelines require or prefer it (e.g. APA).
However and but are antitheticals and rough drafts can have too many. For example, Smith raises a point for view A, but Jones ... a point for view B ... However Brown suggests that view A .... but a factor in favor of B …., etc.
In this case, it is normally best to re-organize points into a cogent argument for view A then a cogent argument for view B.
Students frequently make mistakes when selecting words. Some are simply incorrect useage, while others indicate poor or muddled structure at paragraph and section level, not just poor sentences.
Use formal language when writing a thesis, dissertation, or essay. Your readership is academia, so you should avoid any kind of informal colloquialisms unless you are quoting someone. In particular, avoid words or phrases that are only understood in a particular region, because academia is international. For example:
Use the full term instead of apostrophized abbreviations. For example:
Choose words with precise meanings rather than vague ones.
If two words say what you mean equally well, use the common one.
If you need to use technical terms that are unfamiliar to your readers, define them the first time you use them.
Hints:
• Use a dictionary if you're not sure of the meaning of a word.
• Use a thesaurus to find exactly the right word when the word you have is not quite right.
Replace wordy phrases with a single word:
These words have no meaning except in contrast with something that is not real (e.g. imaginary, delusional, fallacious, or erroneous). You can usually delete them.
It actually has no meaning.is to say
It has no meaning.
It really has no meaning.is to say
It has no meaning.
Avoid obviously. Your statement might not be obvious to your readers, and it gives the impression you are talking down to them. (It is also very embarassing if your statement is incorrect.)
Avoid important, importantly, notable, notably. Everything in your work should be important, and if it's not important you can just leave it out. These words are meaningless unless they are qualified in some way. (Important for what?
) If something has a particular aspect of importance, you should say what it is so that readers can appreciate its value. For example, the test of a medical procedure results in a cure for 99% of patients. However, the other 1% of patients might be important if the procedure caused their deaths.
Other crutch words are: literally, basically, and honestly. These all have their own meanings, which are quite different from their usage in common speech.
Transition words are necessary to bridge thought from one paragraph to the next and to create flow. It is, however, easy to overuse them by using them as a filler. Here’s a list of examples of transition words:
Writers can use Find
in their word processers to locate and check each occurance of all these words as part of proofreading. However, it would be a mistake to replace them automatically because they might be necessary in a particular context. In some cases, you can recast sentences so that they flow well withouth the extra transition words.
Be careful with intensifiers like very, extremely. It is better to be precise.
Subsequently means that one event occurred after another. It is not the same as consequently, which indicates that A is the cause of B.
That has various meanings, but in some contexts is commonly confused with which. In these cases, that has no comma and qualifies a noun, while which adds a decription to the noun:
The simple test for which is to delete its clause. If the sentence still has the same meaning, then you have used it correctly. For example, these two sentences have the same meaning:
In principle, only should be moved to the latest possible postion in the sentence. For example, He chose only books. is better than He only chose books.
A good way to handle a list of points is to use ordinals; they give your readers a clear outline of your points. But which is correct: Firstly, or First,?
Saying in the area of when referring to a field of study or a topic can be imprecise.
Writers often use situation and process as padding:
In research, what’s the difference between important and significant? They seem to be the same, but sometimes one is used but not the other.
This is not a strict rule, but it is good practice:
Replace words that conceal information. The words most
, often
, many
, few
, seldom
, etc. all imply an amount, but don't say what it is. The words too much
, too little
, excessive
, insufficient
, late
etc. all imply a cut-off point, but don't say what it is.
Assessors of professional projects might be more lenient if it's a responsible professional judgement and it would be pedantic to spell it out. In academic writing, however, you will normally need to state the amount or the cut-off point. It can be conceptual, such as a criterion. It often doesn't need to be a number.
Never, ever say Many scholars believe that ... Scholars usually have different opinions, so you must quote specific sources and name your mysterious scholars.
Even worse, never say All scholars believe that ... (Really? Every single one of them? And who qualifies as a scholar?) It's an overstatement.
Sometimes can be tricky. It might mean that you don't know what is happening. Alternatively, it might represent occasional occurances that do not follow a predictable pattern. Assessors of professional projects might be more lenient, but as a general rule, replace it if you can.
Check for overstatements. You might want to make a strong case, but you actually weaken it if you exaggerate. Stick to the facts, and don't wander off making generalizations.
In particular, be very suspicious of words like: always, never, all, none, obviously, prove.
Unless you can make an absolute statement, use words and phrases that are not absolute, e.g. supports rather than proves, tends to ... rather than always.
Delete some of the exciting
stuff like:
In zoomed a dozen superheroes. Bam!!!! Kazow!!
In scholarly writing, maintain an objective tone and delete personal statements. Academic work is not the place to preach or to soapbox your personal opinions.
Long paragraphs easily lose readers and the point of the paragraph gets lost. You can inadvertently hide something important in the middle of a long paragraph.
If something happened in the past, use past tense consistently, not mixed with present tense.
Readers will be confused if you refer to the same item using several different terms.
An anthropomorphism is to treat an object as if it were a human. (Anthropos is Greek for man/person and morph is Greek for shape or form, so it means giving something a human form.) For example: This study explores … This essay presents … This chapter discusses … A paper, essay, chapter, thesis or dissertation is not a person and cannot do anything, so students should recast those sentences.
Some writing guides (e.g. the APA) require writers to eliminate them completely, and they are still unsatisfactory even if your style guide allows
To avoid anthropomorphisms in your academic writing, mention humans as the doers of actions, not objects, for example:
Some instructors don’t ask students to correct anthropomorphisms. If asked to make corrections, some students argue that past instructors permitted it. Some academics are more rigourous than others, and the best attitude is to learn what you can from corrections.
This terrible sentence starts with some of the most common mistakes, which we'll fix step-by-step:
It should be noted that there was a great amount
of material sustenance that was consumed
by the ravenous group.
| The Sentence | Fixing it |
|---|---|
| It should be noted that there was a great amount of material sustenance that was consumed by the ravenous group. | This is just padding. Let's get rid of it first. |
| There was a great amount of material sustenance that was consumed by the ravenous group. | There wasis an existential. It only states that something exists and doesn't help much. We can recast the sentence to use a more useful verb. |
| A great amount of material sustenance was consumed by the ravenous group. | The passive voice is almost always boring and unnecessary. Use active voice wherever you can. |
| The ravenous group consumed a great amount of material sustenance. | It uses some long phrases when common words would say the same thing. The term consumed a great amount of material sustenancesimply means ate a lot of food. |
| The ravenous group ate a lot of food. | This word might be okay, but it's a bit pretentious. A simple word like hungry might be better for such a simple thought. |
| The hungry group ate a lot of food. | Mentioning food is unnecessary. What else would they eat? |
| The hungry group ate a lot. | In the final form, we're left with something easy to read and to understand. It says the same thing as the first sentence, but uses six words instead of twenty. It reveals how little was actually said in the original. |
A large part of what you learn is to polish your written product. The old saying goes: There's no such thing as good writing, only good re-writing.
Remember that it's practically impossible to write a perfect first draft, but it's easy to fix a rough draft.
Remember, your readers only get to see your beautiful final draft, but you can't write it without starting somewhere.
A first draft shouldn't take long and will give you a sense of satisfaction and progress. Start with an outline and a mind-map of what will go in each section. Then use the the mind-map to fill in the outline, Write whole sentences, not just phrases.
Some of the editing task is simply the mechanics of writing. Revise your language until it is clear, concise, and grammatically correct. Avoid long-winded, overly complex sentences. (Language is not a good substitute for thought.) Check for spelling and typing mistakes. Make sure your English expression reads well. Make your thinking as logical and as responsible to others as it seems to you.
Your language style need not be perfect but must not devalue the work. Pay attention to reworking convoluted language, removing redundancies, and efficiently expressing your ideas.
This e-book doesn't contain a guide for grammar or punctuation, two huge areas in which students frequently make mistakes.
You aren't dumbing down your work by using clear, simple sentences. Quite the opposite. You are bringing your thought to the foreground, rather than hiding it behind verbiage. You are improving your communication, making your points more sharply, and keeping your readers interested. (Incidentally, you might even be required to edit and re-submit if your assessor thinks that the extra verbiage is a deliberate ploy to boost your word total.) Besides, if your thinking is sophisticated and precise, your language will probably be quite complex enough anyway without the verbiage.
One particular book on style was once the standard work (The Complete Plain Words, by Sir Ernest Gowers) although it is very old. Here's a good tip: Lucille Vaughn Payne The Lively Art of Writing. Payne's book is now quite old but still in print; it seems to have gone through various editions and printings.
Put your rough draft away for a couple of days. Then pull it out and read it aloud. Now that you've forgotten what you were thinking and now rely only on the text, does it sound as good as it did before? Or do you can see things you'd like to improve?
Don't worry about word totals too much at this stage. For every bit of unhelpful stuff you delete, you'll probably have to write that much more to address things that you missed out. It's part of how you write something good.
Rough drafts often don't say exactly what you meant to say. Or perhaps you've thought more about the topic and now have a better view. Perhaps your really good idea
in the first draft doesn't sound so good now.
Decide what you really want to say. Editing will help you think through the topic much more clearly. If you get stuck, start by crystallizing your main idea in a clear sentence of no more than ten words. Then write out your other main ideas in sentences of ten words each.
Students learn that writing and thinking are almost the same thing. As a result, many corrections will be about thinking:
Is this what you really meant to say?
Good point. I hadn't thought of it that way before.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
Good summary of that writer's viewpoint.
I can't see how this is relevant to what you want to say.
Is this true? And if it is, is it always true?
I agree with your facts, but can't see how they lead to your conclusion.
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