Chapter 9 Polishing Revised Draft

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Chapter 9 Polishing Revised Draft

• Wednesday, April 11, 2007

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Sentence Variety

• (2) A housewife in Iran has no job, career, or
  social activity.
• (3) The housewife gets up earlier than anybody
  else in the house.
• (4) The housewife cooks the breakfast.

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Sentence Variety

• (5) She wakes everybody up when the breakfast is
  ready.
• (6) She helps her husband and children get ready
  for work and school.
• (7) She starts cleaning the house and washing the
  clothes after everybody leaves home.

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Sentence Variety

• (8) She goes grocery shopping for dinner around
  noon.
• (9) She stays busy until her lunch time.
• (10) She can have a little bit free time after
  lunch,
• (11) but she can hardly even start on something
  before the kids get home from school.

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Sentence Variety

• (12) The kids run all over the house.
• (13) They scream and cry and never listen to
  their mom until the husband comes back home and
  has dinner.

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Sentence Variety

• All the sentences start with a noun or a pronoun.
• All the sentences are short ones.

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Sentence Variety

• (10) She can have a little bit free time after
  lunch,
• Prepositional phrase After lunch, she can have a
  little bit of free time.

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Sentence Variety

• (7) She starts cleaning the house and washing the
  clothes after everybody leaves home.
• Adverb Clause After everybody leaves home, she
  starts cleaning the house and washing clothes.

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Sentence Variety

• (2) A housewife in Iran has no job, career, or
  social activity.
• Verbal phrase Being a housewife in Iran can mean
  no job, career, or social activity.

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Sentence Variety

• (11) but she can hardly even start on something
  before the kids get home from school.
• Adverb Phrase Unfortunately, before she can even
  start on something, the kids get home from school.

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Sentence Variety

• (12) The kids run all over the house.
• (13) They scream and cry and never listen to
  their mom.
• Combining Sentences The kids run all over the
  house, screaming, crying, and never listening to
  their mom.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• A good way to find out which words are essential
  in a sentence is to underline the key words.
  Then, look carefully at the remaining words so
  you can determine which are unnecessary and
  eliminate wordiness by deleting them.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• It seems to me that it does not make sense to
  allow any bail to be granted to anyone who has
  ever been convicted of a violent crime.
• Bail should not be granted to anyone who has ever
  been convicted of a violent crime.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• 1) Eliminating Deadwood
• Deadwood is a term used for unnecessary phrases
  that take up space and add nothing to meaning.
• There were many factors that influenced his
  decision to become a priest.
• Many factors influenced his decision to become a
  priest.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• In this article it discusses lead poisoning.
• This article discusses lead poisoning.
• They played a racquetball game that was
  exhausting.
• They played an exhausting game.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• 2) Eliminating Utility Words
• Utility words contribute nothing in a sentence.
  Utility words include nouns with imprecise
  meanings (factor, situation, type, aspect, and so
  on) adjectives so general that they are almost
  meaningless (good, bad, important) and common
  adverbs denoting degree (basically, actually,
  quite, very, definitely). Often, you can delete
  the utility word if you cannot, replace it with
  a more precise word.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• The registration situation was disorganized.
• The registration was disorganized.
• The scholarship basically offered Fran a good
  opportunity to study Spanish in Spain.
• The scholarship offered Fran an opportunity to
  study Spanish in Spain.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• It was actually a worthwhile book, but I didnt
  completely finish it.
• It was a worthwhile book, but I didnt finish
  it.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• 3) Avoid Circumlocution
• Taking a roundabout way to say something (using
  ten words when five will do) is called
  circumlocution. Instead of complicated
  construction, use concise, specific words, and
  phrases that come right to the point.

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Eliminating Wordiness

• It is not unlikely that the trend will continue.
• The trend will probably continue.
• Joe was in the army during the same time that I
  was in the college.
• Joe was in the army while I was in college.

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Homework

• Your first draft of the revision assignment is
  due next class.