Clarity, Part 1

In this post, I will write about four topics that I need to work on in order to improve the clarity of my writing. These topics include: needed words, wordy sentences, appropriate language, and exact words.

King, Dave, "Hand Writing." 03/24/09 via flickr. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

1. Needed words: This section focused on words that must be used in order to improve the clarity of a sentence. I have found that I often unintentionally leave out words in an effort to make my writing brief, and this section helped me understand which words I cannot leave out. I was surprised to see what a difference small words actually make in a sentence. For instance, I sometimes overlook the importance of articles, but this section showed me that I really need to focus on using these words to improve the clarity of my writing.

2. Wordy sentences: I have always had trouble expressing my ideas in a concise manner, and this section gave me some pointers on how to improve unnecessarily wordy sentences. I was especially surprised by how often I unintentionally make my sentences redundant. The book suggested several ways to reduce redundancies by using simpler sentence structures. For instance, instead of saying "at all times" I could say "always," and this significantly decreases the number of words used. This will be especially useful in writing a QRG, since I need to keep it brief and concise to keep to the conventions of the QRG.

3. Choose appropriate language: This section focused on how to use language that is appropriate for the paper. It helped me realize how easily it is to slip into jargon. Because the topic for my QRG has to do with an especially scientific topic, it can become difficult to stay away from scientific terms. However, I will have to adopt language that is easy to understand for any audience, and this means working with my writing and choosing language that is appropriate for the QRG.

4. Exact words: This section focused on providing the right tools to help make writing concise and to the point. It was especially useful in its advice on selecting words with the appropriate connotations. More often than not, I have used words that did not have the connotations I was looking for, and that decreased the effect of my writing. In addition, the book suggests using concrete nouns to more clearly express my thoughts. This advice will help me make my writing more concise.

Reflection:

As I paid special attention to my peers' use of language in the QRG drafts, I realized how the topics I mentioned above, although seemingly small parts of writing, made a huge difference in the drafts. The choice of words really impacted the overall strengths of the QRG, and it helped me realize that I need to learn how to follow the advice given in Rules for Writers.

For instance, in Samantha's draft, I noticed that the wordiness of some sentences detracted from her overall point. This can be seen in the following excerpt from her writing:

"There is also the concern that teachers have with the system and that is the fact that the tests occupy such a huge portion of the curriculum, it is felt that they distract from the class content" (page 2).

In this sentence, Samantha makes a great point about the issue. However, the sentence is a little too wordy, which distracts me from its main goal. In this case, fixing the wording would add to the clarity of the sentence as a whole.

Another example if how the language impacts the writing can be seen in Chloe's draft. Chloe does a great job introducing her topic at the very beginning of her QRG. However, she doesn't define what "MFA" stands for, and this could cause some confusion for the reader. This can be demonstrated by this sentence:

"Thus, it has been hotly contested how people should learn to write - as in, Creative Writing MFA programs" (page 1).

In this quote, Chloe doesn't define "MFA," and this detracts from her main point. By defining this term, Chloe could make her QRG accessible to a wider audience.