What is “wordiness”?: Difference between revisions

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.

Redundancy is another common mistake made by students when it comes to wordiness. Diana Hacker notes, “a sentence is wordy if its meaning can be conveyed in fewer words” (124). She gives of redundant phrases such as “ ''close proximity''” and “''true fact''” (125). These words have similar meanings and can be reduced to one word. Diana also emphasizes the point to “look for any opportunities to reduce clauses and phrases to single words” (127). Her example is,

Eliminating big words and redundant words will make getting an A on a paper easy. While proof reading a paper, make sure words are concise so the sentences will not be wordy.