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Reducing the Word Count in Assignments
There are a number of strategies for doing this:
1. Selection of material
This involves being really focused on the assignment topic or title and only reading
and using evidence and sources that connect with this. Sometimes you don’t know if
it does until you read it!
However, scan reading or a look first at any introduction or conclusion chapter or
section will usually give you an idea if the material is relevant to your assignment or
not.
2. Analytical Comment is More Important
Although description, definitions, and background information is essential in the early
stages of an assignment, any analytical content and comment you include is generally
more important for gaining marks, than descriptive. If you have to cut back on words,
concentrate on the descriptive material first.
3. Cut Quotations
As mentioned earlier, try and reduce your inclusion of lengthy quotations.
You can cut inessential words and substitute them for … (dots).
Example:
Paul Timmers (2000) has defined the business model as: “an architecture for
product, service and information flows, including a description of the various
business actors and their roles” (p.46).
You can substitute inessential words with dots, as follows:
Paul Timmers (2000) has defined the business model as: “an architecture for
product, service and information flows … (and) various business actors and their
roles” (p.46).
You can include your own conjunction words, e.g. ‘and’, providing you put them in
brackets to show they were not in the original quotation.
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Academic Skills Advice service
www.brad.ac.uk/academic-skills/
4. Hard Pruning
Assignments often benefit from ‘hard pruning’ of unnecessary words and sub clauses
in sentences. The things to look for, and cut, in your essays are:
Tautologies
Redundant words & phrases
Long-winded Sentences
(Tautologies are using words
together with the same
meaning – so one is
unnecessary; these are
shown in italics).
(These are words that do not add
any useful information to the main
verbs or nouns in a sentence;
these are shown in italics).
(Some students think that these
are expected of them in higher
education. Not so. Keep sentences
short and eliminate the waffle).
Example:
Revert back
General public
Unite together
Divide up; filled up; burn down;
Sink down
eat up
Join together
Discuss about
Follow after
Important essentials
Mutual cooperation
Reduce down
Advance planning
More preferable
New innovation
Sufficient enough
Falsely fabricated
35 acres of land
Ascend up
A number of examples
(53 words)
Collaborate (or cooperate)
Circular shape
Alternative (Better) Version
together
True facts
Penetrate into
A team of twelve workers
Hoist up
Major breakthrough
Meet together
Small in size
The Panorama Software and
Microsoft Roundtable organized a
conference in 2004, gathering
leading minds in business
intelligence and the analyst
community, to gain expert
consensus on the topic. The aim
was to encourage dialogue and
discourse to focus on how business
intelligence can address key
strategic challenges concerning
customers, costs, competition and
change.
The Panorama Software and
Microsoft Roundtable organized a
conference in 2004 for business
intelligence experts to discuss key
strategic challenges concerning
customers, costs, competition and
change. (26 words)
ABBREVIATIONS
You can use abbreviations in your assignment to shorten lengthy titles of organisations or well-known
things. For example, instead of the full citation (Investment Management Regulatory Organisation
2004) you could use the abbreviation (IMRO 2004) instead, which would reduce the word count by
three words. In the references section, you would start with the abbreviation, then explain it.
If you use abbreviations in the text of your essay or report, you should explain the abbreviation first
time you use it, e.g. Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Thereafter you can use the abbreviation and
save on word count. However, don’t overdo this, as an assignment full of abbreviations makes for
tiresome and difficult reading.
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It's Official. Plain English Makes You Seem More Intelligent.
According to a new study from Princeton University in New Jersey, writers who use
long words needlessly and choose complicated font styles are seen as less intelligent
than those who stick with basic vocabulary and plain text.
The author of the study, Dr Daniel Oppenheimer, based his findings on students'
responses to writing samples that had a varying difficulty of language and design.
In a series of five experiments, he found that people tended to rate the intelligence of
authors who wrote essays in plain language and used a clear font, as higher than
those who wrote in a more complicated manner.
Dr Oppenheimer commented that "It's important to point out that this research is not
about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly. If the
best way to say something involves using a complex word, then by all means do so.
But if there are several equally valid ways of expressing your ideas, you should go
with the simpler one.” (p.1)
Here is an example of two sentences used in the study. Readers were asked to rate
the intelligence of each writer.
1. 'The main academic goal I have set for myself is to use my potential to the fullest.'
2. 'The principal educational aspiration I have established for myself is to utilize my
capabilities to the fullest.'
The results show that when people read something written with a more plain English
approach, as in example 1 above, they actually rate the author’s intelligence higher
than they do those who write using large words and complicated sentences.
Oppenheimer suspects people link intelligence with simpler language because we like
to read things that are easy to understand.
Dr Daniel M. Oppenheimer's results are published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive
Psychology 2005.
(Plain English Campaign 2005)
Reference
Plain English Campaign (2005) Mailing List Newsletter 04/11/05
www.plainenglish.co.uk (accessed 04/11/05).
© Colin Neville. [email protected]
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