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Dec 2, 2022 · In strong writing, every single word is chosen for maximum impact. This is the true meaning of concise or economical writing. 5 Word Choice Exercises to Sharpen Your Writing. With our word choice definition in mind, as well as our discussions of verb use and concision, let’s explore the following exercises to put theory into practice.
Sep 16, 2022 · Think about the difference between the words “utilize” and “use.” They mean the same thing, with “utilize” carrying the connotation of using a resource efficiently. Unless “utilize” makes your writing clearer, go with “use.” This same logic applies to any situation where there’s more than one correct word.
- Lindsay Kramer
- What This Handout Is About
- Introduction
- “Awkward,” “Vague,” and “Unclear” Word Choice
- Writing For An Academic Audience
- Selecting and Using Key Terms
- Strategies For Successful Word Choice
- Questions to Ask Yourself
- Works Consulted
This handout can help you revise your papers for word-level clarity, eliminate wordiness and avoid clichés, find the words that best express your ideas, and choose words that suit an academic audience.
Writing is a series of choices. As you work on a paper, you choose your topic, your approach, your sources, and your thesis; when it’s time to write, you have to choose the words you will use to express your ideas and decide how you will arrange those words into sentences and paragraphs. As you revise your draft, you make more choices. You might as...
So: you write a paper that makes perfect sense to you, but it comes back with “awkward” scribbled throughout the margins. Why, you wonder, are instructors so fond of terms like “awkward”? Most instructors use terms like this to draw your attention to sentences they had trouble understanding and to encourage you to rewrite those sentences more clear...
When you choose words to express your ideas, you have to think not only about what makes sense and sounds best to you, but what will make sense and sound best to your readers. Thinking about your audience and their expectations will help you make decisions about word choice. Some writers think that academic audiences expect them to “sound smart” by...
When writing academic papers, it is often helpful to find key terms and use them within your paper as well as in your thesis. This section comments on the crucial difference between repetition and redundancy of terms and works through an example of using key terms in a thesis statement.
Be careful when using words you are unfamiliar with.Look at how they are used in context and check their dictionary definitions.Be careful when using the thesaurus.Each word listed as a synonym for the word you’re looking up may have its own unique connotations or shades of meaning. Use a dictionary to be sure the synonym y...Don’t try to impress your reader or sound unduly authoritative. For example, which sentence is clearer to you: “a” or “b”?Before you revise for accurate and strong adjectives, make sure you are first using accurate and strong nouns and verbs.For example, if you were revising the sentence “This is a good book that tell...Am I sure what each word I use really means? Am I positive, or should I look it up?Have I found the best word or just settled for the most obvious, or the easiest, one?Am I trying too hard to impress my reader?What’s the easiest way to write this sentence? (Sometimes it helps to answer this question by trying it out loud. How would you say it to someone?)We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance ...
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Oct 30, 2020 · Use our list of writing terms to expand your writing vocabulary. This will increase your understanding & help you communicate thoughts about your writing.
- Mary Gormandy White
- Staff Writer
- admin@yourdictionary.com
Good writing has a way of singing on the page. Bad writing has a way of alienating the reader, and sometimes even causing offense without meaning to. Whether you’re writing fiction, poetry, essays, or academic papers, your specific choice of words—their style, impact, and connotative meaning—can make or break your connection with your audience.
Words are the ground level of writing, and they can communicate confidence, carefulness, and consideration. By carefully selecting words, writers build their meanings from the ground up. Let’s learn more about what goes into choosing words and the effects those choices can have.
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Oct 3, 2023 · Each word has a meaning, but most words also have connotations, which skew the meaning in a particular direction. Connotations are implied or emotional undertones that flavor a word’s meaning. If your character is going home, there is a much different implication than if the character is going to her house.
