Tonight while I was working with students who were writing a book review for history class, I addressed wordiness.

Each student said he was having trouble expressing what he was trying to say. In essence, each was trying to talk around the idea in order to figure out what to say.

That is fine for writing drafts. We have to write down our thoughts in order to work through some ideas.

I made a handout. It’s simple and to the point. Click on the link to see it   Help for wordiness.

At one college where I worked the Provost enjoyed beginning the meeting with a tongue in cheek wordy announcement. Trying to maintain a straight face, he opened meetings with foolishness such as “The internal structure of linguistic transparency does not undermine the politics of representational familiarity”.

The Calvin and Hobbes cartoon below speaks for itself.

Click on it for a clearer view.