Paul's Style Response 4
From Mizzou Wiki
Chapter seven focuses on concision. The author lays out six basic steps to keep writing concise. Words that don’t really mean anything (like kind of, practically, or virtually) should be removed, along with doubled up words that are redundant (like first and foremost). Information readers can infer from other words should also be removed. This includes words like “final outcome” or “true facts”, and groups of words like “large in size”, large implies size, so “in size” is redundant. Phrases should be compressed to single words wherever possible (the reason for to why, for example). Negative should be changed to affirmatives; words with “not” in front of them should be changed to a positive form without not. Useless adjectives and adverbs should also be removed. Some metadiscourse also needs to be removed. Metadiscourse that links idea to a source or that announces the topic should be removed. Metadiscourse that qualifies or intensifies the certainty of a statement should also be watched for. It can be redundant and influence readers’ opinions of the writer.
The Here’s the Point boxes in this chapter weren’t as helpful as they were in previous chapters. They list steps to write more concisely, but unlike previous chapters, they aren’t enough to explain their content alone. The explanations of the steps to write concisely were very helpful, however. The inclusion of examples for most steps makes it easy to understand what to look for. As in all of the previous chapters, there are plenty of examples to help the reader see what the author is saying.
I found this chapter very informative. I’ve never had anyone bring up many of the points the author makes about being concise, and I think it will improve my writing. The examples in the chapter were very helpful. The lists of words that could fall into each category of words to remove was the most helpful, now I know what kind of words to look for to revise writing to be more concise. I found Williams’ discussion of metadiscourse interesting. I’d never heard of it before this book, but it’s interesting to see how often it is used in writing.
