There is certainly more than one way to repair a wordy sentence, and your effort might, in fact, be better than ours. Whether youre a blogger, novelist, seo professional, or student writing an essay for school, slick write. But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Here are a variety of worksheets to help students master sentence structure.
There are some unusual sentences with errors that can be corrected with the help of following tips. Many local farmers plan to attend next fridays meeting. Make sentences and paragraphs more concise by omitting. You have been successfully subscribed to the grammarly blog. There are many types of wordiness, but we will give you five examples. Guided practice edit the following paragraph to make any wordy sentences as short as possible without changing their meaning. Eliminating wordiness exercise 1 answers purdue writing lab. Although bradley hall is regularly populated by students, close study of the building as a structure. In this sentence, the girl is the subject, walked is the verb, and away is the adverb. Wordiness and redundancy unnecessary repetition of wordsideas can be. Remove unnecessary words and rewrite the sentences, but dont change the main idea. The wilsons moved into the house in spite of the f act that the back door was only ten yards from the train tracks.
Avoid passive voice, needless repetition, and wordy phrases and clauses. The paragraphs are quite long, and this should take most students quite a while to complete. The numbers in the margin refer to appropriate revision strategies in section 16 of the bedford handbook, seventh edition. Change wordy phrases into single words or direct expressions when possible. A few inches of snow on the ground is all that is necessary in order for a person to be able to go sledding. Click here for all of my capitalization worksheets and resources. The message can often be lost in long wordy sentences. English writing exercises the best way to improve your english writing skills is to write every day, or at least as regularly as possible. Verb and subject relation every sentence contains a subjectverb agreement meaning that it is the need of a sentence that it should have a subject and a ver, the verb which should be related to the subject.
The worksheets below are just a sampling of the capitalization resources on this website. Begin by working on subjects, predicates, and objects, and then move on to clauses. Expand, combine, and reduce sentences 15 print and go printables. Avoiding wordy expressions clutter is the disease of american writing, william zinsser declares in his book, on writing well. How to use free in a sentence thesaurus and word tools. Choose from different sets of wordy sentence flashcards on quizlet. Learn wordy sentence with free interactive flashcards. Eliminating this problem may require moving words around in the sentence. Adjective clause has been reduced to an appositive phrase. Revise these sentences to state their meaning in fewer words. For sentence 2, there is an equivalent free from a doubleclause. I will complete my research paper in a period of a week. Occasionally, such constructions are necessary, but many writers use them far too often.
As you read the following list, consider which patterns are typical of your writing. Direct some students to start from the last sentence and work their way to the first to be sure all four sample sentences get pruned by. The beautiful, majestic, breathtaking city of rome was visited by many tourists from america during the hot summer. These sentences feel watered downlike you have to do a lot of work to gain a little information. Grammargrounds grammar education is a free, comprehensive site with instruction, videos, quizzes, and more. Repeating yourself unnecessarily does not add emphasis to your writing. I might add, it should be pointed out, it is interesting to note that how many sentences begin with these dreary clauses announcing what the writer is. Aanika has been deeply in love with cooking since she was little and could first peek over the edge of a big kitchen tabletop. The focus of this writing activity is to have writers revise and edit a threeparagraph passage to eliminate wordiness and repetition. Wordy is the realtime, human proofreading and copyediting service. Writing concise sentences vigorous writing is concise. Give the students the wordy sample sentences and tell them to prune them. Exercise 1 worksheet is suitable for 5th 9th grade.
Learning sentence structure will help students master punctuation and write better sentences with a greater confidence. Her hope was ignited by him he ignited her hope sentence 5. These sentences begin with a core sentence such as the girl walked away. Johns stylish boots, made of crocodile skin, cost him an arm and a leg. All of the students who are new to this school are required to attend a meeting that has been. Avoid lengthy expressions that make a sentence wordy. The bus company will probably announce its schedule during the next few days. Toprated online proofreading and copyediting services.
Powtoon is a free tool that allows you to develop cool animated clips and animated presentations for your website, office meeting, sales pitch, nonprofit fundraiser, product launch, video resume. Any student who wants to meet foreign students can do so. To reduce wordiness, he implores the writer to remove needless words and phrases. There are currently too many prisoners of war pows. The dictionary alphabetically lists wordy phrases with alternative expressions and realworld examples. But sometimes its hard to think of something to write about. If you would like to suggest an improved version, write to grammar english. Part one is words and people, with concise advice about concision, and part two, beginning on page 45, is the dictionary of concise writing. Capitalization worksheet 1 students read 15 fun sentences themed around books and the act of reading. Avoid unnecessary repetition of words toefl blog lessons.
English brewers are allowed a free hand in the use of adjuncts which can include honey, ginger. In this language arts worksheet, your child gets practice looking up words in a dictionary. Under the circumstance in which when use active voice. A expand, combine, and reduce sentences for meaning, readerlistener interest, and style. A free house is a pub that is free of the control of any one particular brewery. Best english grammar checkers online grammar check your. If you can remove a word while keeping the sentence s meaning, the sentence is wordy. Wordiness, the passive voice, redundancy, precise language, abstract. Pdf this study compares verbs and verb collocation patterns in english and persian in. Eliminating wordiness exercise 1 purdue writing lab. A free online essay to practice your narrative essay writinginstantly scored. The english teacher looking for tools, the student looking for some extra help, or the new english speaker hoping to master the language will find what he or she is looking for here. Rewrite the following sentences in the textareas provided. If youre looking for inspiration, check out the list of practice english writing exercises below.
Synonyms for wordy at with free online thesaurus, antonyms, and definitions. In fact, being too wordy can cause many problems in your writing. When you are finished with each sentence or, if you wish, wait until youve done them all, click on grammars version, which will reveal how we might have rewritten the sentence to achieve a more concise statement. The following are examples of redundant word pairs. In this writing exercise, students are given a series of sentences and asked to rewrite them to eliminate wordy phrases and clauses, repetition and passive voice. When you are writing your paper or essay, it is very important to ensure that your document does not contain typos, grammatical errors and bad sentence structure. Writing, grammar, and communication tips for your inbox. Wordy sentences wordy sentences contain many unnecessary words. You can add elements to this type of sentence, such as the girl slowly walked away, where slowly is an adjective describing how the girl walked. A free weekly newspaper is published by the same publisher, johnston press, called the journal.
Writing skills success in 20 minutes a day, 4th edition. Wordy sentences use too many useless words that clutter writing. Verbosity excess word use is often a result of idea generation, and wordy sentences and paragraphs, especially in early drafts. I recently started rereading william zinssers on writing well. Keep a word if it is necessary to the grammar of the. Twentysomethings are often thought of or stereotyped as apathetic. Slick write is a powerful, free application that makes it easy to check your writing for grammar errors, potential stylistic mistakes, and other features of interest. Please do exercises w21 and w22 on wordy sentences, and w31 on active versus passive voice sentences in a writers reference. Subjects, objects, and predicates with pirates worksheet. Your child gets practice writing this sentence and coloring in the picture. It was her belief that in the example, the phrase was unnecessary avoid wordy phrases.
In an attempt to make ideas sound important, writers may use long words and intricate. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no. Ridding the world of wordy sentences, one sentence at a time. Expletive constructions usually require a writer to use the passive voice instead of the active voice. Bradley hall is usually filled with students who do not study the building as a structure.
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