User:Tony1/Redundancy exercises: removing fluff from your writing
Redundancy is a major source of problems in writing. Here are sets of exercises to sharpen your ability to identify redundancy. The exercises tend to get harder as you progress through the page. Remember, you're trying to develop the habit of scrutinising the need for every word in a text. Undertaking these exercises can be the start of a longer project to tighten up your prose. The exercises are in BrAusIrSthAfrNZ English, so Americans (and to a lesser extent, Canadians): please tolerate televise, behaviour, centre, travelling, defence, et al.
"Unfolding" design. The exercises are designed to be done in your head, without writing. Each exercise unfolds in stages: first you'll see the problem text, then—if you need them—one or more clickable hints to help you along; then a solution; and finally an explanation. You'll get the most out of the exercises by thinking carefully about each stage before clicking on the next. Stop before you've had enough, and plan to return each day to take up where you left off. "Distributed" ("spaced out") practice rather than "massed" (all at once) practice will have a more lasting effect on your writing style.
Visitors: why not register as an editor? This page receives an average of 10 visits a day—more when external writing courses have recommended it. If you're a visitor, please consider the satisfaction you might gain from joining the global effort to build the largest repository of knowledge in human history, by becoming a registered editor. It's simple, free, private, and takes about five minutes. Share your knowledge with the world. You choose how much to contribute. But of course you're welcome to do the exercises without registering.
Feedback on how to improve these exercises is welcome on the talk page.
Self-help writing tutorials:
Starting out: removing a single word
[edit]Let's begin with straightforward tasks. The following six examples can be improved by striking just one word. First try to identify the word; then hit [show] to view the suggested solution. Please remember not to type in your answer: just think, then click.
A
[edit]Last month more than 40% of featured article nominations successfully passed.
B
[edit]The vectors—green and yellow—follow the average rainfall pattern for each region (see Figure 2).
C
[edit]They invaded the coast and brought along European diseases.
D
[edit]The manager has plans to accept the offer.
E
[edit]The least accessible forested areas were the last ones to be cleared.
F
[edit]Both the parents chose to educate their children in Beijing.
Removing a single word: more exercises
[edit]Further straightforward tasks.
A
[edit]This sudden recognition had led to keen competition for Handel's future services.
B
[edit]The orbiter project, cancelled in 2005, would have specifically targeted Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
C
[edit]These two species are both members of the equine family.
D
[edit]After 1731 the opera was not staged again for more than 200 years.
E
[edit]There are three established methods available for the delignification of lignocellulosic biomass.
- "Available" is redundant because its meaning is already contained in "established".
- But much better would be to bin "There are", like this:
- "
There areThree established methods are available for the delignification of lignocellulosic biomass."
- "
- Hint: "There are ..." is often a sign that redundancy is lurking.
- Hint: But why not simplify the ungainly "the delignification of"?
F
[edit]Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 was a turning point for the composer; but he revised it several times in the years following the work's premiere.
How many did you get right?
- All correct: excellent—consider moving straight to Redundancy renovations (1).
- One or two wrong: fair.
- More than two wrong: this skill needs attention—consider undertaking all of the exercises below.
Removing one or two words
[edit]A
[edit]This question rarely arises outside of the soccer league.
B
[edit]The field trips identified potential hot-spots in typical rolling mills, and the researchers have made some initial contacts with companies to gain permission for trials of their new cooling system.
C
[edit]The B41 gold-nib fountain pen was originally released in 1966 and is still in production today.
- "Still" and "today" carry virtually the same meaning here. "Today" makes your reader momentarily ponder whether the meaning is "this very day" so it's probably a better candidate for removal.
- You could probably remove "originally", since "was" is past tense and a product is normally launched only once. The only exception might be that there was an original launch, and a subsequent launch of an upgrade.
D
[edit]The coastal region is an exception and it enjoys a flourishing tourist industry.
E
[edit]Longer tonicisations may also include other secondary chords.
- Even without the larger context, it's obvious that "also" is idle here; "other" is quite sufficient for the sense.
- "Also", an additive connector, is almost always redundant.
F
[edit]This involves the provision of a reference section, complemented by inline citations for quotations and any material that is likely to be challenged.
G
[edit]Cystic fibrosis is a common hereditary genetic disorder that affects many different parts of the body.
H
[edit]This relationship had already existed before Adobe purchased the company.
I
[edit]Although Ottawa is one of the Ojibwe dialects that has undergone the most linguistic change, it is still mutually intelligible with other dialects.
J
[edit]In terms of numbers the Roman army was far superior.
How did you go in those two sets of exercises? Remember that you're trying to train your eyes and mind to be like a radar, asking whether removing each individual word will change the meaning. With practice, this will become automatic.
Redundancy renovations (1)
[edit]Replacement wording may be required, but just do it in your head—no typing please!
A
[edit]These findings posed a great number of problems.
B
[edit]Recent analyses of available historical records show why the European settlement of Greenland failed.
C
[edit]After the punch-up at the grand final, the NCAA took measures to prevent major brawls from happening again.
D
[edit]In the year of 1988, there were renewed efforts to boost the government's popularity.
E
[edit]These aspects serve to distort what would otherwise be some of the attractive elements of the architecture, such as its structure and envelope.
- "Serve to" implies purpose; but clearly no one would purposely try to distort what would have been attractive elements of the architecture.
- Both "some" and "such as" are subset terms; you don't need both. There's a temptation to use "some" to convey the sense of "not all" elements of a set. But there's no need, because if you did mean "all of the elements", you'd write it explicitly. So "some", as often, is redundant: just writing "elements" (the plural of "an element") means "more than one of the attractive elements, but not all of them"; "the elements" would mean all of them.
Redundancy renovations (2)
[edit]A
[edit]As a result of making such decisions, poker players are able to maximise their odds and win more money.
B
[edit]More than 300 million Led Zeppelin albums have been sold worldwide, including 109.5 million sales in the US alone.
- Two words are very similar.
- Logic allows for one word to be removed.
- Another improvement could be made by removing a word that is probably an unnecessary amplification.
- "Sold" doesn't need to be reinforced here by "sales"; this is an "ellipsis", where Led Zeppelin album sales are assumed.
- "In the US" is already a subset of something, and the default assumption is "worldwide", which can be dropped unless there's doubt in the larger context (for example, if "the OECD" had just been mentioned).
- Adding "alone" seems unnecessary, but if particular emphasis were needed, perhaps it could be retained.
C
[edit]Apart from the poets mentioned in the Kavirajamarga, later Kannada writers have referred to three poets as being eminent among their predecessors.
- The second occurrence of "poets" can be omitted as an ellipsis.
- "Being" is unnecessary; the grammar has now shifted to referring to something as X; this requires no verb be, since "as" does the job of equating.
D
[edit]Due to problems with some of the more novel features of Bulleid's design, all members of the class were subsequently rebuilt by British Railways during the late 1950s, losing their air-smoothed casings in the process. A third of the class avoided the scrapper, and they can be seen on heritage railways throughout Great Britain.
- "Subsequently" is redundant because the sequence of events is clear without it.
- In the process reiterates when they were rebuilt. Replacing losing with and lost would remove a comma.
- "They" can be removed and understood "silently" by the reader (ellipsis).
- "Some of" seems to be necessary here as a subset term.
E
[edit]He contributed to research that led to the finding of a cure for malaria.
Further difficult exercises
[edit]These examples will require varying amounts of recasting in your head.
A
[edit]The end of ship-building—the result of a factional struggle in the Chinese court—had an enduring effect throughout the subsequent existence of imperial China.
B
[edit]The majority of critics gave the film negative reviews.
- "The majority of" is unnecessarily precise here, unless you really want to emphasise "more than half". Yes, English does have the potential to be ugly.
C
[edit]The territory's path of evolution has been a challenge for the government.
D
[edit]Sport is a compulsory activity for all students; teams usually have training two times a week.
- Sport is an activity, so there's no need to tell us that. "Have training" is a loose expression, analogous to "have classes"; in writing, something neater and simpler is required.
- Where possible, use one word for two ("twice" for "two times").
E
[edit]During a complex history, four local communities have tried to become the capital over the years.
Longer examples
[edit]Redundancy occurs not only because your intended meaning is already conveyed by other words in the sentence; the wider context you've established in the text can make wording redundant. Picking out redundant wording from longer windows of text brings us closer to the actual editing experience on Wikipedia.
At the end of each "problem", we tell you how many incidences of redundancy the text contains. See if you can mentally tick them off as you read through, before hitting the Show Hint button to reveal the general location of each redundancy.
A
[edit]The eye of a storm is a region of mostly calm weather found at the centre of a tropical cyclone. Typically 30–65 km in diameter, the eye is surrounded by the eyewall, where the most severe weather of a cyclone occurs. A cyclone's lowest barometric pressure occurs in the eye, and can be as much as 15% below the atmospheric pressure outside of the storm. The distance between the centre of the eye and eyewall defines the radius of maximum wind for a tropical cyclone. [Five incidences of redundancy]
- "Of a storm" and "of a cyclone" are readily recoverable from the wider context; "a cyclone's" can go for the same reason.
- "Found" is like "situated": fluff. We just don't need to visualise the meteorologist staring at the radar monitor "finding" the eye of the storm.
- "Outside of" is a lapse into looseness; the "of" should be binned even in speech.
B
[edit]Coronation Street is Britain's longest-running television soap opera, first broadcast on Friday 9 December 1960 in the Granada region of ITV. The program has consistently been the most highly rated program on British television. Since its launch, Coronation Street has been broadcast in many countries worldwide, including Canada, Australia, Belgium and Holland, and has also been translated into five languages. Its storylines have covered diverse topics and themes, including death, marriage, divorce and murder. [Five incidences of redundancy]
- The second "program" can be removed through ellipsis.
- "Since its launch" is logically assumed.
- "Worldwide" doesn't say much after "In many countries"; it implies that these countries are widely spread around the world, but this is obvious from the subsequent list.
- "Also", as usual, is idle.
- "Topics" is logically assumed from the context; the list is of themes, not topics, so the sentence is improved by the removal.
C
[edit]After a recommendation from Dutch admirals saying that the Koninklijke Marine should be bolstered, the Minister of Defence ordered the Navy to prepare designs for a battlecruiser class. A preliminary plan by Dutch designers was completed in July 1939, but as they had never designed any sort of modern capital ship (the battleships of 1913 having been of foreign design), the plans did not reflect any of the advances in warship design that had come about after the First World War; in particular, the armour protection was totally outmoded. [Five incidences of redundancy]
See also
[edit]- ThoughtCo list – a useful list of fluffy groups and phrases. I haven't checked out the rest of their site. Beware its potential as a commercial hook to funnel you towards pay-sites.
- Cut the Clutter – actual exercises with suggested solutions. Quite good.
- Jprof, for teaching journalism – looks ok, but remember that journalism is quite a different register from that required in Wikipedia articles and research text. Again, it's a teaser to draw you into forking out money.
- David McMurray's examples – front page worth reading through.
- Writing concise sentences – another list of flabby-turned-concise examples.
- OWL at Purdue: Eliminating wordiness
- Pleonasm exercises – identify redundancy in each of 10 examples. On the easy side.
- AMW Editing redundancy exercises. Different style—long-winded short paragraphs need to be pruned back. The answer links generally don't work on Archive,
- PrismNet wordiness examples. Go straight down to the examples in grey boxes. Quite good; business, organisational contexts.
- Exercises in a Google Drive document, unnamed author. But please, avert your eyes from what we hope is a thoughtless blooper, not deliberate racism, in "the natives stared at the automobile in amazement".