Awkwardness, Pt. 3: Wordiness

“It should be noted that it is the text that serves an explanatory purpose that would confuse the individuals that are mandated to engage in performing the process of passing the driving test.”

Nasty forest of wordiness

There are so many words in this sentence that I can’t even begin to see the meaning behind them!


To be a good writer is to make as much sense as possible using as few words as possible. If the reader can’t see the forest for the trees – trees being words the writer throws in to sound more sophisticated – it’s the writer who’s doing something wrong, not the reader being too thick (no pun intended).

Flowery orchards of meaning

When a sentence has grown to the point of being incomprehensible, you’ve got to do something about it. To be a good editor is to see the forest through the trees, so to say, and chop those extra trees down to make it all nice and trimmed. No disregard for nature intended, of course.


Another situation you may find yourself in is when you are limited by a word count and those extra hundred words just won’t go away. When a forest has grown well past its well-established borders, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable for the reader to struggle through it, seeing no end to its bloated tangled form.

Was that a mixed metaphor there? Uhm... Back to the point.

Trees to chop down:

1. Replace wordy expressions with more concise ones:

• for the reason that/in the light of the fact that → since/as/because; 
• with the exception of → unlike/except for; 
• it is only a matter of time before → eventually; 
• in the event that → if; 
• so as to → to; 
• for the purpose of → for; 
• a decreased number of → fewer; 
• is helpful in understanding → clarifies; 
• has the ability to → can.

2. Delete words that make the phrase tautological (i.e., when the meaning of one word already includes the meaning of its modifier): 

• mutually interdependent → interdependent; 
• witnessed firsthand → witnessed; 
• warn in advance → warn; 
• new invention/innovation → invention/innovation; 
• necessary prerequisite → prerequisite.

3. Change the passive voice to the active voice. See my previous post on how to do that.

4. Get rid of nominalizations. See another post on how to do that.

5. Replace unnecessary (the key word being “unnecessary”) that/who/which clauses with short phrases: 

• the agreement that you have with Company X → your agreement with Company X; 
• employees who have not been trained → untrained employees.

6. Avoid using “it is” or “there is/are” at the beginning of your sentences. The only exception is when you want to emphasize a point, which should not happen too often lest it stops being emphasis. 

• It is our conclusion... → We conclude... 
• It is this situation that is uncomfortable. → This situation is uncomfortable.
• There are many employees who are underpaid. → Many employees are underpaid.

7. Delete empty words and phrases: 

• basically, essentially, virtually, generally, very (makes your claim weaker, not stronger, contrary to the common opinion), really, for all intents and purposes, as the case may be; 
• it is clear/evident/apparent that, it is important/crucial that, it is interesting/important to note that, it is possible that, it goes without saying that, it would seem/appear that, what is important is; 
• more or less, tend to, serve to, serve the purpose of, particular type of, sort of, and so on.

8. Weed out repetitive ideas. There is no point in reading the same thing over and over, even if the writer finds new words to express it and makes every iteration concise. Say what you want to say once: the reader is not dumb, you know.

Trees to leave be:

1. A word that is necessary to the grammar of the sentence. Obviously, you don’t want to ruin the sentence completely or make your reader stumble upon a nasty grammar mistake.

2. A word that is a key idea, fact, feeling, or description. Don’t turn that forest into a wasteland: if there is no idea left after you have hacked the sentence about, what’s the point of it then?

Now that you’ve got the tools, see that sentence at the very top? Let’s make it better:

“It should be noted that it is the text that serves the purpose of explanation of the test that would confuse the individuals that are mandated to engage in performing the process of passing the test.” → “The explanatory text would confuse the people who must pass the test.”

And, of course, the classic example: 

“It is important to effect the verbalization of concepts through the utilization of unsophisticated terminology.” → “Speak simply.”

Final tip. Try to keep your sentences to no more than 25 words, give or take: longer sentences, even if they have no redundant words, can be difficult to follow, which may distract the reader from your point (see what I did there?). Split them.

Comments? Questions? Want to gush about Van Gogh? Which is always welcome on my blog, by the way :) Share your thoughts under this post!

P. S. This post contains cases of intentional wordiness. Can you find at least five?

Awkwardness, Pt. 2: Passive Voice

“After all, human agents are responsible for designing experiments…writing awkward phrases to avoid admitting their responsibility and their presence is an odd way of being objective.” 

- Jane J. Robinson

A passive construction occurs when you make the object of an action into the subject of a sentence. That is, whoever or whatever is performing the action is not the grammatical subject of the sentence.

Contrary to some writers’ opinion, the passive voice is not an error in terms of grammar but a stylistic issue pertaining to clarity: there are times when using it can prevent your reader from understanding what you mean. The general opinion is that the passive voice makes writing flat and insinuates evasion of responsibility in writing of any form, not just scientific writing. Besides, writers who overuse the passive voice may have not fully thought through what they are discussing, which makes for imprecise arguments.

Consider the following example:

“Although Penelope shares heroic characteristics with her husband, Odysseus, she is not considered a hero.”

Who does not consider Penelope a hero? It could be the writer him-/herself (evading responsibility for his/her opinion), but it could equally be the critics (imprecise argument – we don’t even know which ones) or even the readership in general. Sure, it may be perfectly clear to the writer when he/she composes a sentence like that, but since most readers have not mastered long-distance telepathy yet, they cannot fully appreciate the writer’s idea.

Here’s a few more examples:

“It is argued that method A yields the best results.” - Who argues this point?
“A new system of data processing has been suggested.” - Who has suggested it?

“Women were not treated as equals.”
“African Americans were discriminated against.”
“The working class was marginalized.”

None of these three sentences make for precise arguments or have proper connection to the context. By context here I mean the systems, conditions, human decisions, and contradictions that caused such oppression. If the reader learns nothing about the agent of the action (who or what caused those bad things to happen), he/she will doubt the writer’s understanding of the topic he/she’s dealing with.

And here’s where the editor comes forward and saves these claims by making them active. How should you do that? Easy, just follow these three steps:

1. Spot the passive voice. Tips: look for any forms of the verb “to be” (is, are, was, have been, will be, being, etc.) followed by a part participle (a verb typically ending in “-ed” or an irregular past participle such as “bought,” “paid,” “shot,” etc.).

Basically, this is the formula you’re looking for:

a form of “to be” + past participle = passive voice

Another way to recognize passive voice is to ask yourself: 1. if there is any action going on in the sentence; and 2. if the person or thing who does that action is somewhere at the beginning of the sentence – before the verb. Hint: if it is not and the object (the thing being acted upon) takes its position, the sentence is prooobably passive. Well, it’s definitely passive.

2. Identify the agent (doer) of the action – who is actually doing it? There are three possible cases here:

a) the doer may be lagging behind somewhere after the verb in an awkward “by X” structure:

“At the time of the accident, the car was being driven by Liam.”

As I’ve mentioned earlier, in a passive structure, the action is more important than the person/thing who does it. See how by making the sentence passive the writer subtly shifts the blame from Liam. I bet the guy was DUI too! Don’t let him escape the punishment and make the sentence active!

b) the doer may be missing altogether:

“Research has been done to prove this hypothesis.”

In this sentence, we have no idea who did the research, but in our field of work, it is pretty important. Apparently, the writer is trying to hide some hole in his/her research, so we’d better help him out: make this sentence active and say who is the doer of the research. I mean the action. Whatever.

c) the doer is not present in the sentence but it is clear from either the previous sentence or the context:

“Professor X conducted a similar study in 1979. The effect of the X-factor on human subjects was investigated under various conditions.”

The passive voice sentence does not even mention Professor X, but since we have read about him earlier, we know he was the guy doing that dubious study. Got you there, Professor! Oh well, credit where credit’s due - let’s make the sentence active.

3. Rewrite the sentence so that its subject is performing the action.

In most cases, you can just switch the word order, making the actor and subject one by putting the doer of the action up front:

“At the time of the accident, Liam was driving the car.”

Sometimes you may find that need to do some extra research or thinking to figure out who the actor should be:

“Researchers X, Y, and Z have conducted a study to prove this hypothesis.”

For bonus points, you will likely find that your new sentence is stronger, shorter, and more precise:

“Similarly, in 1979, Professor X investigated the effect of the X-factor on human subjects under various conditions.”

While passive voice can weaken the clarity of your writing, there are times when it is perfectly OK or even preferable. In academic writing, passive voice is used to describe a process, the results of study, or similar material which is objective in nature, but active voice is used to describe actions. For example, passive voice is useful in the Methods section of a dissertation, where the steps taken by a researcher (see what I did there?) are more important than the researcher him-/herself.

In any case, your guiding principle should be clarity: you should think about what information the target reader is looking for and choose the active voice or the passive voice, whichever will make the text most clear and comprehensible.

On a side note, sentences in active voice tend to be more concise than those in passive voice because fewer words are required to express action in active voice than in passive. Making the text less wordy will be the next topic of this blog: “Awkwardness, Pt. 3: Wordiness.”

Comments? Questions? Share your thoughts under this post!

Awkwardness, Pt. 1: Nominalization

“It is important to effect the verbalization of concepts through the utilization of unsophisticated terminology.”

Well. That was awkward.

The three elephants awkward writing rests on are nominalization, passive voice, and wordiness. All three are connected and often come together for a monthly Feast of Awkwardness. While these elephants keep merrily holding each other’s trunks in the text you edit, it just feels awkward to you.


Some are harder to spot and revise than others, especially if English is not your first language. So we’ll start with the biggest yet most elusive elephant: nominalization. 


What is nominalization? Nominalization is, well, a nominalization. That is, the word itself exemplifies the concept perfectly. Basically, it is a combination of the verb “nominalize” and a noun-forming suffix, from which we may conclude that a nominalization is a verb used as a noun. You know, instead of performing its natural function. Which is being a verb.

Verbs describe actions or states, and no other part of speech does that job better. Still, some ESL writers, especially those whose first language is synthetic (Slavic languages are common offenders), cram nominalizations into every other sentence. Somehow, people think it makes them sound smart.

It doesn’t. Sorry.

Indeed, the trend to nominalize stuff comes from scientific writing (see? smart!), where what happens is often more important than who does it. The names of researchers are usually on the title page anyway, so who cares about them when you’re in the middle of a fascinating description of what they actually did there.

Good use of nominalization and passive voice is actually required in Master’s level papers and other solid research (see what I did there?), but unless you’re working on something that sophisticated, nominalizations actually make your writing weaker. Nouns are not as vivid as action verbs, and you usually have to add linking verbs (forms of “to be” and “there is/are” structures), not to mention other action verbs – you can’t have a sentence without a proper verb, after all. Well, you can, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. In the end, your neat, concise sentence swells up from five words to twelve, yet it does not become any more informative, detailed, or powerful. Writers may do that to inflate the word count (in a very, very stilted and artificial way), but we editors gotta do better than that.

The point is, you have to keep it to a minimum. 

 
Sometimes you may feel that it is hard to express your idea without resorting to nominalizations. Here’s a few tips that may help you see another way:

1. Find verbs turned into nouns and turn them back into verbs: conduct an analysis of the data → analyze the data; give a statement → state/say; make a suggestion → suggest.

2. Replace various forms of “to be” with action verbs (pay special attention to “there is/are” structures): the aim of the researcher was to verify the hypothesis → the researcher aimed to verify the hypothesis; there is a need for clarification of the new curriculum → the school administration should clarify the new curriculum; there was a suggestion that... → the manager suggested that…

3. See if you can replace Passive voice structures with Active ones: the decision to postpone the launch of the new product was made by the company → the company decided to launch the new product later.

Some of these have double nominalizations. Yes, they do come in pairs often, and it’s our job to shoo them out and make way for these concise action-verb beauties. 


Here’s some more examples:

"Consideration of career prospects is another important factor…" → The student should consider his or her career prospects…

"The beginning of the conflict is the first act." → The conflict begins in the first act.

"The opportunity of expression of opinions is another merit of online learning." → Online learning allows students to express their opinions freely.

"For success and proper recognition in the game, observation of other players is essential…" → To succeed and be recognized in the game, the player should observe others first.

"Armed with the intention to facilitate the entry of contemporary artists…" → To help contemporary artists enter…

"…whether consideration of their familiarity with art would be necessary." → …whether they need to be familiar with art.


Now, how would you revise these two sentences?

"The drop in the cost of technology allows drone accessibility."

"There are fears that the adoption of the legislation can be an inhibitor to the growth of the young industry."

This one is, perhaps, my favorite: "The [Japanese] provocation acted as a motivation for the subsequent American participation [in WWII]…"

Comments? Questions? Hate the elephant metaphor? Share your thoughts under this post!

Coming soon: “Awkwardness, Pt. 2: Passive Voice.”

This is your brain on editing

I kindly welcome you, dear reader, in this humble blog!

Nope, scratch that. You've gotta come up with something better. Come on, man, that's your first line, and it already sounds a hundred years old!

Ok, once again.

Welcome, dear reader, to my humble blog.

Umm, I guess that's better, but still... Why does it sound like you're apologizing for its very existence?

Welcome, dear reader! This is my blog about editing. Revising... Rewriting... Aaargh!

Ok, focus now.

Welcome to editing. Let's get some coffee, get comfortable, and get to work.

Yes, that's much better.