DD10HW1
DD8HW1 To work on Original VS Revised versions (Attached Below)
Conciseness (brevity) is a hallmark of good technical writing, in fact, almost all writing. This activity is designed to make you more aware of wordiness. You may have heard of the plain language movement initiated by the Obama administration that issued guidelines for effective writing. You can view the guidelines here at plainlanguage.gov. You will see that one of the guidelines is “be concise.”
Please make a mental note of plainlanguage.gov’s website. Their recommendations adhere to and exemplify principles and practices of good technical writing. You may need to refer to the website in the future or direct a peer or subordinate to do so.
I. Review the section on conciseness of plainlanguage.gov. Within it are the subsections and guidelines that follow:
Write short sentences: Express only one idea in each sentence. Long, complicated sentences often mean that you arent sure about what you want to say. Shorter sentences are also better for conveying complex information; they break the information up into smaller, easier-to-process units.
Keep the subject, verb, and object close together: The natural word order of an English sentence is subject-verb-object. This is how you first learned to write sentences, and its still the best way. When you put modifiers, phrases, or clauses between two or all three of these essential parts, you make it harder for the user to understand you.
Write short paragraphs:
Write short paragraphs and cover one topic per paragraph. Long paragraphs discourage users from even trying to understand your material. Short paragraphs are easier to read and understand.
Writing experts recommend paragraphs of no more than 150 words in three to eight sentences. Paragraphs should never be longer than 250 words. Vary the lengths of your paragraphs to make them more interesting. As with sentence length, if all paragraphs are the same size your writing will be choppy.
There is nothing wrong with an occasional one-sentence paragraph.
Using short paragraphs is an ideal way to open up your writing and create white space. In turn, this makes your writing more inviting and easier to read.
Along with breaking material up into shorter paragraphs, consider adding headings for each paragraph as we did in the following example.
Write short sections:
Short sections break up the material so it appears easier to comprehend. Long, dense sections with no white space are visually unappealing and give the impression your writing is difficult to understand. Short sections also help you organize your thoughts more effectively.
Short sections give you the opportunity to add useful headings, which help the reader skim and scan the page. Long sections are impossible to summarize meaningfully in a heading. When you break up different concepts into short sections, each heading can give the reader a clear picture of whats in that section.
II. Revise your recommendation report using the recommendations for conciseness according to guidelines 1, 2, 3, and 4 above.
III. Revise two passages in the report using each of the guidelines. You may use any part of the report, your writing, or others’. Your answers are going to be lengthy in some cases because you revising whole paragraphs and sections but don’t worry about it.
IV. Submit your work as a table in a Word or a PDF file to DD10HW1: (INDIVIDUAL) Conciseness. In the left column, copy your original passage. In the right column, write your revised passage, as in the tables below. Don’t forget that you need two examples for each guideline.
Please Fill in the table attached below to complete this assignment.
Note: if you can’t fit a whole section in the “Revised Section 1” cell in the right-hand column, just describe what you did to revise the section. What did you cut? How did you decide what to cut? How did you rearrange the section in relation to others? Did you move parts of the section that was too long to another section? Where did you move it to? Why? What other changes were you forced to make in writing a shorter section? Just generally explain what you did.
