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Eliminating Words
Summary:
This resource will help you write clearly by eliminating unnecessary words and rearranging your phrases.
1. Eliminate words that explain the obvious or provide excessive detail
Always consider readers while drafting and revising writing. If passages explain or describe details that would already be obvious to readers, delete or reword them. Readers are also very adept at filling in the non-essential aspects of a narrative, as in the fourth example.
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2. Eliminate unnecessary determiners and modifiers
Writers sometimes clog up their prose with one or more extra words or phrases that seem to determine narrowly or to modify the meaning of a noun but don't actually add to the meaning of the sentence. Although such words and phrases can be meaningful in the appropriate context, they are often used as "filler" and can easily be eliminated.
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Here's a list of some words and phrases that can often be pruned away to make sentences clearer:
- kind of
- sort of
- type of
- really
- basically
- for all intents and purposes
- definitely
- actually
- generally
- individual
- specific
- particular
3. Omit repetitive wording
Watch for phrases or longer passages that repeat words with similar meanings. Words that don't build on the content of sentences or paragraphs are rarely necessary.
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4. Omit redundant pairs
Many pairs of words imply each other. Finish implies complete, so the phrase completely finish is redundant in most cases.
So are many other pairs of words:
- past memories
- various differences
- each individual _______
- basic fundamentals
- true facts
- important essentials
- future plans
- terrible tragedy
- end result
- final outcome
- free gift
- past history
- unexpected surprise
- sudden crisis
A related expression that's not redundant as much as it is illogical is "very unique." Since unique means "one of a kind," adding modifiers of degree such as "very," "so," "especially," "somewhat," "extremely," and so on is illogical. One-of-a-kind-ness has no gradations; something is either unique or it is not.
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5. Omit redundant categories
Specific words imply their general categories, so we usually don't have to state both. We know that a period is a segment of time, that pink is a color, that shiny is an appearance.
In each of the following phrases, the general category term can be dropped, leaving just the specific descriptive word:
- large in size
- often times
- of a bright color
- heavy in weight
- period in time
- round in shape
- at an early time
- economics field
- of cheap quality
- honest in character
- of an uncertain condition
- in a confused state
- unusual in nature
- extreme in degree
- of a strange type
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