What is “wordiness”?

Many students fail research papers because of wordiness. Being redundant often confuses readers and they lose interest in the writing quickly. Keeping a reader’s attention is very important, and two ways to do this is to keep your audience into consideration at all times by eliminating big words and redundant words.

A common mistake used in wordiness is students trying to use big words. Students do this to sound smart and to impress their teachers. Big words are usually used just to make simple sentences sound complex and intelligent, but if you use a simple word it does not mean that the paper sound childish. Sometimes using big words make sentences sound ridiculous. Here is an example.

• Wordy: That baby is gargantuan.
• Concise: That baby is huge.

A list of things that make a sentence awkward are provided on the website: Word Choice/Wordiness.

• misused idioms
• unclear pronouns
• misused words
• jargon
• garbled syntax
• loaded language
• Calloquialisms