verbal obesity (kiana 0504)This is a featured page

Kiana Smith 27 May 2009 Writing as a Technology 328 Style Rules Project I decided to deal with what I like to call verbal obesity. Verbal obesity is when a sentence or paragraph contains unnecessary words. More specifically, my rule seeks to aid writers in eliminating excessive detail, redundant pairs and modifiers, high language and using a phrase for a word. To begin, excessive detail is when a writer provides the reader with too much non-vital information about the subject of a sentence. The following is an example of this; A big truck that you might purchase from a dealership like Ford or GM will use much more gas than a smaller car that you might purchase from a Honda or Toyota Dealer. The above sentence included several unnecessary details, which only cluttered the sentence and caused the reader to arrive at the point slower. It would have been more effective for the reader if the sentence were written like this; A big truck from Ford or GM uses more gas than a small car from Honda or Toyota. Do you see the difference? The subject of the sentence is immediately made clear as is the point. If asked to recap a reader could quickly identify the point of the modified sentence. Writers will often use redundant pairs and modifiers. A redundant pair is two words that essentially mean the same thing or have the same impact on a sentence. A redundant modifier can be a word that is typically an adjective that is used to intensify a verb or a noun. Writers typically use this type of verbal obesity when they are attempting to be very specific or when they are attempting to write in a formal fashion. NOTE TO READER: I feel like I am coming across to cold and mechanical. What do you think? Should I change my approach to how I express the importance of my rule?


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kiana0504 		Latest page update: made by kiana0504 , May 27 2009, 11:27 PM EDT (about this update About This Update kiana0504 Edited by kiana0504

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