Concision Worksheet

This concision worksheet helped me realize how much I struggle with concision in my writing. I have the tendency to "overstuff" my writing by adding unnecessary words, causing my writing to become confusing at times. 

1) I am happy with the majority of the changes I made because it made my paper easier to follow. One recurring issue throughout my paper was excessive usage of adjectives and phrases. Before the concision activity, many pieces of my paper ended up being redundant due to additional words and phrases that reiterated points already made, which in turn made those pieces hard to follow at times. Some of the unnecessary words also diverted attention away from the point being made because of how convoluted my sentences were. 

One sentence in my paper that highlights this issue was, "Additionally, I was more focused on my studies, leaving me more time later on to relax and have some sort of leisure time, compared to the rushed/packed schedule that excess phone time created." Not only did this sentence approach run-on sentence territory, but it also used more words necessary to express what I was trying to say. After revision, I came up with the new sentence, "I was more focused on my studies, leaving additional time later for relaxation and leisure time compared to the hectic schedule resulting from excess phone usage." I got rid of the transition word at the beginning because it was unnecessary in its context, along with filler words that only made the sentence longer than it needed to be. 

There were components that I wanted to keep because it represents my typical writing style, like my use of transition words/phrases and sentences with more than one comma. However, I knew that I needed to revise at least some of them because it would make my paper easier to comprehend.

2) This activity reminded me that I need to work on conciseness in my papers, which is something that I've dealt with in writing before. I feel like if I could master the art of concision then my writing would be better than it is now. I think that conciseness is something important in writing, but I also think that being too concise can be detrimental. Some points need more material to be presented fully. Being overly concise can lead to the omission of crucial details, which might be worse than lengthy statements.