1. Jamie Flathers English 101.50 and 56, Fall 2019 1
Three Sentence Revision Strategies
All good writers have one thing in common: they use the smallest possible number
of words to get their points across. This should be your goal any time you sit down
to write. With this in mind, here are three revision strategies to help you pare down
your sentences.
Remove Unnecessary Modifiers. A modifier is any word that changes the
meaning of the word that comes after it (or sometimes before it). Adjectives
modify nouns; adverbs modify verbs. Sometimes, modifiers help—you need them
for description, for emphasis, etc. At other times, though, modifiers can bloat a
sentence—they increase the word count without contributing meaning. You should
remove these.
Here’s a partial list of the most common unnecessary modifiers: so, just, really,
very, actually, seriously, totally, literally
Remove auxiliary verbs. Beware auxiliary verbs, also called “to be” or helping
verbs: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, have, has, had. These verbs can’t
convey action, but they’re often attached to verbs that do: “I was walking to the
store,” for example. Unless you’re about to tell a story—“I was walking to the
store when a unicorn pooped on my shoes . . .”—you should divorce the helping
from the active verbs. Rather than saying, “I was walking,” say, “I walked.”
Instead of saying, “I was going to have to,” say, “I would need.”
Resist explaining the obvious. Many writers explain the obvious without realizing
it. When they do, their sentences get bloated and tend to sound rambling. Consider
the following example, from Purdue’s Online Writing Lab:
I received your inquiry that you wrote about tennis rackets yesterday, and I
read it thoroughly. Yes, we do have that model you wrote about.
If an inquiry exists, someone obviously wrote it. If a person is responding, they
obviously read it. If the inquiry was mentioned in the previous sentence, it doesn’t
need to be mentioned again. Edited for the obvious, the example would look like
this:
I received your inquiry about tennis rackets. Yes, we do have that model.
One more example, because this bears repeating:
2. Jamie Flathers English 101.50 and 56, Fall 2019 2
Imagine a mental picture of someone engaged in the intellectual activity of
trying to learn what the rules are for how to play the game of chess.
Can you imagine something that isn’t a mental picture? Do you really need to say
that leaning chess is an intellectual activity? Edited for the obvious, the example
would look like this:
Imagine someone trying to learn the rules of chess.
