Writing 101: How to Write Concisely

1. Introduction New Trim: Hello everyone, Welcome to Writing one-on-one course series, how to write concisely. I'm Mika, your instructor for this course. I'm a freelance writer, social media marketer, an English teacher. I write on my personal blog and on medium.com. In this course, you'll learn how to write concisely or how to write using as few words as possible to make our ideas clear and more easily understood by your readers. The first, learn the importance of writing concisely. Then you'll learn three techniques to make it possible, such as bleeding redundancies, keeping it short and simple, and being direct. This course is designed for beginner writers, are those who haven't written anything since graduating from school. However, experienced writers will benefit from this too, as they can use their lessons during the editing stage of the writing process. But whatever your level is, all you need for this class or your pen and paper and of course, your full attention. 2. Class Project: For the class project, you're going to take one paragraph from a textbook published and edit it using the techniques you've learned. If you don't have anything published yet, you can edit the text in the resources section. So if you're ready to begin your writing journey, Let's get started. See you in the first lesson. 3. Why You Should Write Concisely: So let's get it on. Now. Why should you write concisely? Take a look back when you were in school. Perhaps back in school. Your teachers may have asked you to write the 500th birthday essay about the specific topic. As a student. You will write wherever it is in your mind, just to complete the minimum rate got the 500. Even in the working road. Adding extra words. This practice to make it sound more professional. What are missing in both situations is the conciseness of that text. Writing concisely is important because you get to keep your reader's attention. Concise writing gets and keeps your attention. You yourself may have experienced reading a text and stopped it in the early part because you didn't like how it is written. It has happened to me many times. The writer may have tried too hard to make the opening attention grabbing that he or she used flowery roots. If you want to get and keep her reader's attention, remember to keep it short and simple are which is often known as kiss her ISS, keep it short and simple. The second reason is to avoid misinterpretation. How many times have you experienced reading a text multiple times? Because you were unsure if you've got the main idea correctly. Wordy and lengthy articles are prone to being misinterpreted because readers lose their train of thoughts while trying to finish reading the sentence. The unnecessary words impede the reader's understanding. When you're writing and make it easy for your readers. Related to the previous reason, you want your texts to be easily understood. Again, think about your readers. They're reading your article or book because they want to learn something new. As a writer, make it easier for them, but keeping it concise and short. Now that you know the importance of writing concisely, Let's go back to the techniques you can apply both in writing and editing stages. 4. Technique 1: Deleting Redundant Words: The first technique is deleting redundant words. Redundancy is unnecessary use of the words are afraid to which have the same idea. Many writers unconsciously commit this because of what has been practiced for a long time. Think about the phrase first and foremost. When you look at the dictionary for most means, the first in a series of progression. Use the phrase first and foremost you're saying, first, first. Technique one, leading redundant words. You'll learn the three types of redundancies that writers often can be without even knowing it. This three types are, number one, redundant modifiers. Number two, redundant adjectives. Number three, redundant work bearings will go through itch in the next slides. The first type of redundancy is redundant modifiers. The reason we commit this redundancy is over here and we'd this words, this recombinations often that within its acceptable and okay to use together. You can see the sentences have become lengthy because of redundant routes, such as free gift, new initiative, and present status. All of these sentences are from the Internet, has just changed the subject of what legal issues. However, the structure is still the same. The first sentence, the State Center Mall could give away a free gift for pixel six B orders tomorrow. They're redundant words here are free gift, because gift is something you'd give for that expecting payment. Therefore, it's fee. You don't really have to say free gift. Similar to the second sentence, the Department of Education announces its new initiative to increase student attendance. The initiative itself means the ability to assess, initiate things independently. Pitch the idea is to start something new. In the last sentence you have present status. Check the dictionary annuity. That status is defined as position of affairs at the particular time. So there's no need to add the word present before it. This word combinations are commonly used, but they get in the way of Friday and concisely. In editing your text, make sure to double-check for redundant modifiers like this. A few more examples of redundant modifiers are basic essentials. Consensus, opinion, and my favorite and result. Now for the second type of redundancy is redundant categories. Words can already imply its category, but sometimes we make the unconscious decisions of frightening both the word and its category. This sentence has already tell us what we're talking about even without seeing the category. The first sentence, government officials should be honest and character. When you describe someone as honest, you're already talking about his character or her character. There's no need to pair honest and character. If you remove that heard London categories, you're down to five for its government officials should be honest. Similar to the next two sentences, a mixer should be heavy and weight and easier to grip. And y is bloodbath in colon. Your reader already knows what you're talking about, even if you're a move away from heavy in weight and remove in color from red in color. Removing the categories will leave you at nine words for the second sentence, mixer should be heavy and easier to grip. And forwards for the second. Sorry for the third sentence, what is blood vet? Other redundant categories are odd in appearance, round in shape, large in size, and in a confused state. The next redundancy you should be aware of is redundant word bearing. Redundant word pairs. The first word has the same meaning as the second root. In speech, it's okay to use this words because of the rhythm. But in writing it's best avoid them. When you read this word, you'll see that the first second words have similar meaning. So why you use them? In legal writing, the word pairs like this are common. Think about cease and desist. This East already needs sees or stop. So why repeated redundant word pairs have been ingrained in legal writing that they already act as a single term. That's why it's hard to read. You go documents. You can see this phrases often and you might miss it when you're writing, but you can always sell them in the editing part. In the Resources tab of this course, you'll see a link of the 50 most used redundancies. 5. Technique 2: Avoid Unnecessary Repetition: The third way of keeping your writing short and simple is to avoid unnecessary repetition. Repeating words can confuse your writers or sorry, you're either. Let's read the example. If you compare european cuisine with Asian cuisine, you will find that Asian cuisine is more diverse than european cuisine. Quite a long and confusing sentence, isn't it? European cuisine and Asian cuisine where he had been twice. How can you shorten this? You can shorten it in two ways. Let's just review the word, the sentence. The original sentence was just 20 words. If you compare European cruising with Asian cuisine, you will find that Asian cuisine is more than european cuisine. It has 20 words. The sharpen it. You can use ladder to replace a second Asian cuisine and skip than european cuisine and u hat. And if you do this, you have the sharp version. Number one, if you compare european cuisine with Asian cuisine, you will find that the ladder is more diverse. That past 17 Roberts. The second strategy is to simply state that you're trying what you're trying to say, which is a shorter version. Asian cuisine is more diverse than european cuisine. It's as simple as that. Now when editing your work, check out the repeating words. One simple way of deleting or repeating words is to use pronouns. Their sources section, I'll add where it got a.net to see or which you can use to see your most repeated roots. 6. Technique 2: Meaningless Intensifiers: Now the second technique is to keep it short and simple, which I have mentioned earlier as kiss. That can the school, the challenge was to submit the 500 word essay. Sometimes you've exhausted your brain and have shared everything you know about that topic, but they still haven't reached the minimum where it got. This time. The challenge is to keep it short and simple. You have to convey your ideas in as few words as possible. Now I'm going to share three ways how you can keep it short and simple. Here's the first way you can keep your writing short and simple. Use single words instead of phrases. If you look at the sentences, ten things you need to know prior to traveling abroad during a pandemic. It has 13 words. The second one, you're expected to return the form to the office at an early date, which has 14 words. The third one, what each person must leave behind in order to go, has standards. How many words will each sentence have? If we're pleased? The phrase is involved with single words. Let's check the first sentence. Instead of using the phrase prior to, we changed it to before. From 13 words, we decrease the 212 words. The second sentence, we replaced the phrase at an earlier date with the word soon, leaving us with 11 words from the original Ford inwards. In the third sentence, we used to, instead of in order to, we've used it to iterates. Some may be using this phases to sound formal and professional. But business writing or professional writing she didn't belong to. It's better if you keep it short because people are too busy that they want. And what they want this just to get the gist of your letter or email at once. Imagine how many words will reduce if you use single words. The second way to keep it short and simple is to get rid off meaningless intensifiers. Let's have a quick grammar review. What are intensifiers? Intensifiers are typically adverbs and adverbial phrases that strengthen the meaning of other expressions and show emphasis. The words you see here are some of the most commonly used intensifiers. You may think this sentences are already short, but be shorter. The answer is yes. If you caught down the intensifiers. Let's see how this sentence says would look like if you remove the intensifiers like very in tune. The first sentence, we're pleased, very bad with charitable. And now we have five for the second sentence. Instead of frightening, really beautiful, we're advised it too alluring and got one root. So we were left fifth forwards. In the third sentence. Instead of writing too tired, we revise it too. Exhausted, were done by one route. You may think we only removed one root two. How is it that big needle? Well, every word count plus using intensifiers like very or extremely, show weakness in your writing, which do you think sounds better, very bad, or terrible. It also shows that you lacked vocabulary to make her sentence more powerful. Think about it, really. Beautiful versus alluring. Isn't the ladder more appealing? Cutting this incentivizes, watch on, only shorten your sentences, but will also make them powerful and expressive. 7. Technique 3: Be Direct: Now we're down to the third technique. And it's simple. Be direct. Whatever you're writing, whether it's a book or a blog post, you no longer have minimum words required. You can write with this few words as you can, as long as you can convey your ideas. That's why it's important to be direct. If you recall from the previous lesson, we cut 12 ribs from the sentence. If you compare european cuisine with the Asian cuisine, you will find that Asian cuisine is more diverse and European goods cuisine being direct and say, Asian cuisine is more diverse than european cuisine. In this video, you will learn to strategies and how you can write directly or straight to the point. The first strategy is to use verbs instead of nouns as much as possible. Avoid using nominalization. Nominalizations are nons created from verbs, for example, decision, revision, or investigation. This our actual sentences from the web. However, the subjects and objects of the sentences are changed for legal purposes. Let's treat each sentence. The company have made the decision to keep supervisor Alexa, leave this insight in charge of the project. Now that's 16 words. The second sentence, make a revision on this part because it's too bright. I know what the sentence is ironic, but it has downwards. The last sentence, the employee is calling for an independent investigator that doesn't have highlighted the company to conduct an investigation into the matter. Just reading it as making me confused. Now this sentence has 22 words. How many words will each sentence B, if you use verbs instead of nods, Let's check it out. The first sentence we've replaced, make a decision with the side. That's why we got down to words. The company has decided to keep supervisor, Alexa. Dave is in charge of the project. For the second sentence, we've replaced maker vision on with revise. Now we have seven words. The last one, the confusing one. We replace, conduct an investigation with investigate. Now it's 20 words. This sentence can be further simplified, but we're focusing on using verbs to be concise. We will further edit this in another lesson. The third strategy for being direct is to avoid indirect negatives. It's that simple. Indirect negatives or sentences or phrases with the word not. If you read this sentence as deputy short, they already the damages were not significant. The host wasn't very nice to us. I didn't like how she treated to a homeless person. So it has 579 words. But if you move the word not, this sentences can be shorter. Let's see how it will go. We've removed the knot and your police have widths. It's still convey the same message. The damages were insignificant. Now we have four words. Instead of using not significant, we used insignificant in Eclat down one word. For the second sentence. We're pleased wasn't rude. The host were rude to us. Now we've got two words were done to five roots. In the last sentence, mirror placed, don't, don't like with hate. I hate how she treated to home this person. So we're left with eight breaths. When writing every word count. Even if you only got one word, it already makes a difference in your writing. Here is a conclusion.