SMARTHINKING Writer's Handbook

Chapter 4, Lesson 4

Wordy Phrases

Objective

In this lesson, you'll learn how to substitute single words and short phrases for wordy phrases that can obscure your meaning.

Inexperienced writers often believe that they should write for academic audiences in what sounds like "academic language." Sometimes writers want to pad what they write with extra words and phrases because they're not quite sure what they're saying. In these cases, writers use phrases that are far from concise and economical.

As writers, we often don't know what we want to say until we begin to write, so wordy phrases are common in the drafting stage of the writing process. During that process, we think and ponder, making the same statement twice or using too many words in an effort to find out what we think and what we want to write. Using writing to think out the message is both common and helpful. In effect, this somewhat messy drafting phase is the reason that so many writers depend on the revision process to polish and hone their writing. One way that writers revise is by cutting out wordiness that can dilute potentially powerful writing.

Look at a few of our revisions to see how easily you might rewrite your more redundant phrases and achieve a more direct and clear style:

Emphatic Repetition

In some cases, we might want to repeat ourselves in order to say something very strongly, or emphatically. When we do this, we're using emphatic repetition to underscore a point that is very important. The expression "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" is an example of this kind of repetition. It isn't redundant because it is trying to express its meaning in an organic way, using a repeated word to underscore how important it is never to give up trying. Yet in a sentence like: "Sick people are hospitalized in hospitals built just for them," we have used a word twice unnecessarily. In this case, we've used the word "hospital" both as a noun and as a verb. For more information on nominalization, or the process of turning nouns into verbs, please see Lesson 5 Nominalization and Passive Voice.

Exercise

Use the textbox to revise the following sentences by cutting unnecessary words. Then click to compare your answers to ours:

Due to the fact that the weather is changing, I think I'm going to buy some boots at the boot store.

Whether you like it or do not like it, Sara is going to eat dinner here with us at dinnertime.

My past experience tells me that it always gets very dark very early in December.

Summary

Although it is common to use wordy phrases during the drafting process, cutting them out will improve your clarity and strengthen your style.