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Revision: My cousin Jake hugged my brother Trey, even though Jake doesn’t like Trey very much. Using a pronoun when readers can’t tell whom/what it refers to.Įxample: My cousin Jake hugged my brother Trey, even though he didn’t like him very much.Revision: I sprayed the ants in their hiding places. Words with unwanted connotations or meanings.Įxample: I sprayed the ants in their private places.Revision: Cree Indians were a homogenous culture. Misused words-the word doesn’t actually mean what the writer thinks it does.Įxample: Cree Indians were a monotonous culture until French and British settlers arrived.

See if you recognize any of these issues: Sometimes, though, problems with clarity are a matter of word choice.

What I was actually trying to express was something more like this: “Having finished with studying, the students quickly ate the pizza.” If you have a sentence that has been marked “awkward,” “vague,” or “unclear,” try to think about it from a reader’s point of view-see if you can tell where it changes direction or leaves out important information. The problem here is that readers will naturally assume that first bit of the sentence “(Having finished with studying”) goes with the next noun that follows it-which, in this case, is “the pizza”! It doesn’t make a lot of sense to imply that the pizza was studying. Here’s an example: “Having finished with studying, the pizza was quickly eaten.” This sentence isn’t hard to understand because of the words I chose-everybody knows what studying, pizza, and eating are. Sometimes a sentence is hard to follow because there is a grammatical problem with it or because of the syntax (the way the words and phrases are put together). 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 clearly.ĭifficulties with word choice aren’t the only cause of awkwardness, vagueness, or other problems with clarity. So: you write a paper that makes perfect sense to you, but it comes back with “awkward” scribbled throughout the margins. “Awkward,” “vague,” and “unclear” word choice Don’t be too attached to what you’ve already written if you are willing to start a sentence fresh, you may be able to choose words with greater clarity.įor tips on making more substantial revisions, take a look at our handouts on reorganizing drafts and revising drafts. This handout will explain some common issues related to word choice and give you strategies for choosing the best words as you revise your drafts.Īs you read further into the handout, keep in mind that it can sometimes take more time to “save” words from your original sentence than to write a brand new sentence to convey the same meaning or idea. When your instructors write things like “awkward,” “vague,” or “wordy” on your draft, they are letting you know that they want you to work on word choice. You might ask yourself, “Is this really what I mean?” or “Will readers understand this?” or “Does this sound good?” Finding words that capture your meaning and convey that meaning to your readers is challenging. As you revise your draft, you make more 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. 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.