This is one thing that I did not understand when I first went through it, I had no idea what a wordy sentence is because don't all sentences have words in them.
I thought about this for a while and it clicked... You can have a sentence without words! At this point I felt like a absolute genius. To my great disappointment (I felt really stupid), as I opened the lesson work I was that my brilliant thought, well it was very off.
Now wordy sentences actually contain unnecessary words, or you have to read something really long to only get a little bit of information out.
You can easily tell when your work is wordy if you don't feel it. Wordy sentences make you loose the meaning; you feel like the writer was just writing stuff, when you read it. The main problem is not the amount of words, but when the words used do not add any information or detail to the sentence.
Quick example:
Wordy: My father, as well as my brothers, sister and mother love long walks up mountains and across long distances to enjoy the lovely view, from the rocks and nature to the wide panoramic views on the tops of the mountains.
Better: My family enjoy hiking and it's scenery.
A huge problem with getting rid of wordy sentences is that often we remove way too much and all the meaning is also then lost. For this example one can clearly see that I have lost some key description and you can also not feel me in the writing. Never kill the expressive and richness of your writing, but also don't put your reader to sleep while he/she is looking for information while reading.
Even better:My family love going hiking for a few days as they get to see all the beautiful things nature has to offer.
Remember that there is not set rule about this. For me I just play around with the sentence a few times till I get something that sounds and feels right.
Just on a little side note for self improvement. I will be doing 1 push-up for every 1$ earned on my posts and will give a short feedback every day at the end of each post. As promised I will be doing 100 pushups, today, for yesterdays post. Any not done will carry onto the next day. 90 is carried over to the next day.
I with @awgbibb on this one ... definitely verbose I am
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And so am I :D
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That is something I became cognizant of recently. People use many "filler" words that are not needed, myself included.
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When you have to write a really long 5 page essay, well then "filler" words are really nice to use :D
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Agreed, that's probably where the habit formed.
Grade School teach: Write a 5 page essay
Me: This great book is awesome and the storyline is an epic journey taking you on thrilling ups and down throughout an exhilarating ride.
Wait, what? :-)
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Ah, I really hated those days at school in the English class.
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I talk too much!
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Hahaha don't we all at times.
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Great write @dragonslayer
Before you reach 100 pushup
read my post https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@digital-entrep/my-first-post and see if it had wordy sentences, if it does I would also be doing 1 push up per each wordy sentence
Feel free to upvote and follow
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Hahaha I will have a look and let you know. I am not a professional editor though. There is nothing too wordy, maybe one or two words you could change here and there.
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thanks for the feedback (sighed) no pushups for me then
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Do a few just for the fun of it :)
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You the boss, Hw about ten. I think that's my limit for now
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You are about 5 push up down to a 100. YOU must be sweating now cos i am, just with my 10
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Very good information! Thank you.
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Timely advice! Sometimes I put myself to sleep while reading my own writing LOL. I'll put your tips to good use :)
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Well that is a clear indication that your writing is wordy :P
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Hahaaa...indeed :D
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Love the post... Thank you for sharing it!
Writing is a never ending learning process :)
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Yes I have to agree with you there, even professionals are still learning new tricks.
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Thanks for the informative post..its really fruitful me as well as others too...
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I really liked your advice, especially when you talk about putting words that give meaning to the sentence. I try to create stories and I'll take your advice. Thanks for sharing with the community!
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Pleasure I wish you all the best in your writing and stories :)
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Well it looks like you could be heading for another 100+ today :)
Looking for the happy medium of sentence length, fluidity, and descriptiveness is tricky. I tend to write to the point without many adjectives which let's my writing style down I feel. I blame the computing books I fell asleep on during my degree!
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Yes it is very tricky and even professionals get this wrong some times, as the get so excited with details and information.
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I tend to write very wordy. Bad case of philosophical influence.
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Tell me about it. What's worse is when you lay out your premise and define your terms all at once. Text wall every single time, and it translates to my fiction writing as well.
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something like that too ^^
But I meant more like "He did go the barber, but only on saturdays, if it was not raining, and when his wife told him to."
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Bananas
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Pineapples are better on pizza ;)
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Wow this is pretty cool :)
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Great explanation.
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Thank you for the clarification. I really need to re-read this and practice.
Grammarly keeps telling me "Wordy Sentences" and I feel it, but correcting it is very hard.
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Well testing different sentences is a great idea, so take the sentence and see how many different ways you can write it with the same meaning. Then choose the what you think is the best sentence.
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Thanks for sharing some grammar advice :D I have this book called The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. , which helped me with writing/grammar
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I have never read that book, but as long as you keep learning how to improve your writing then it doesn't matter which way you take to get there.
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I use it mainly as a reference :D good book. highly recommend it
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Nice. When trying to express something in detail you tend to accidentally create a maze of words- long sentences with commas and hyphens. When you decide to start writing a post or comment, you think it's going to be a short 2-3 sentence one, but it keeps growing as you want to express more relevant information. Because of that I have the "bad" habit of editing my comments a few times. Forgive me for that.
I try to consciously reduce the "wordiness" but sometimes you can't help it when you can't afford to miss the details :)
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I think a lot of people actually suffer from writing how they would speak, this often makes sentences very wordy. I have also done this before and even now
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Thanks for an interesting post. Good luck with the push-ups!
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usefull and interesting information @ dragonslayer109:) thank you!
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I often do this, but in my defence I would like to say that speaking wordy has helped me with essays and exams ^^ u
I am following
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You are a great inspiration...
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Thanks! It would help me a lot. I follow you, upvote and resteemed your post. 😊
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Thank you great blog post and I will be following you. I sometimes think that I need to be a bit more wordy...
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Finding the right amount of words is impossible, so I would not stress about it. Playing around with a sentence helps a lot so maybe try that.
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Great piece of advice, I suck at making sentences, My most sentences contains a lot of redundant words. Don't know when will I get rid of them and become precise in writing my opinions. Followed you for this advice, looking for more in future.
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