Sentence Stricture And Length 8.4

Question 1

Wordiness

Answer 1

Is the primary cause of elongated-sentence syndrome.

Ex/
People who study psychology professionally are interested in the ways humans act and think.

Change to

Psychologist are interested in human behavior and thought.

Question 2

Repetition

Answer 2

Repeating the same word in a sentence can not only make it longer but often awkward to read.

Question 3

Redundancy

Answer 3

Using more words than necessary creating long sentences.

Ex/
Plan ahead / plan
Unexpected surprises / surprises

*being concise makes it easier to read

Question 4

Nominalization

Answer 4

Is a type of redundancy when a longer noun form is used in place of a verb.

Ex/
Bring about the destruction of

In place of

Destroy

• can help with religion and some academic guides suggest it.

Question 5

Padding words and phrases

Answer 5

Are terms that frame a sentence without adding anything meaningful.

Ex/
In my opinion, Napoleon was a great general.

Cut it out and it doesn’t change the meaning. It weakens it by making it seem it’s an opinion not fact.

Question 6

Unnecessary modifiers

Answer 6

Modify a term without adding anything substancial to a sentence.

Ex/
Invading Russia was definitely a strategic mistake.

The adverb definitely doesn’t add anything to the sentence.

Question 7

Fixing padding and unnecessary modifiers

Answer 7

Ask

•does it make it clearer

• does it serve a rhetorical purpose

• could it be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence

• important in formal writing

Question 8

Common padding phrases

Answer 8

• for the most part

• as a matter of fact

• it seems that

• to all intents and purposes

• for the purpose of

• because of the fact that

Question 9

Common unnecessary modifiers

Answer 9

• somewhat

• extremely

• practically

• actually

• very

• basically

Question 10

Passive voice

Answer 10

Allows us to focus on the thing being acted upon rather than the person or thing performing the action.

Ex/
Un 1929, the first Best Actress Oscar was wonby Janet Gaynor.

*helps if writing about Oscars or when first-person detracts from the focus of the writing

Question 11

Rephrasing long sentences

Answer 11

Should be left in a comment when proofreading. Only tweak sentences.

Question 12

Varying sentence length

Answer 12

Helps read more fluently

Question 13

Stringiness

Answer 13

Stringy or compound sentences that contain several clauses can be difficult to follow.

A good sentence should include one main idea.

Question 14

Choppiness

Answer 14

When several short sentences are used successively can seem simple or lacking in fluency.

Question 15

Transitional words and phrases

Answer 15

Clarify how sentences in a paragraph are related.

Question 16

Common transitional terms

Answer 16

• likewise, similarly, in the same way

• however, nonetheless, in contrast, by comparison

• furthermore, moreover, additionally, equally, importantly

• accordingly, as a result, consequently, therefore, thus