The Art of Brevity
The art of brevity is, indeed, a noble pursuit and one that I have yet to master. Working full-time in the area of technical communication, while pursuing a part-time Master's in the field, has certainly benefitted my attempts to rein in my tendency towards a verbose style of writing. However, I do like nothing better than the creative writing that this blog affords when I can just let my imagination and my vocabulary run free, and bend to the whim of the Muse when it hits me.
One of the main challenges for me in the various module assignments for this course, was sticking to the prescribed word count. What a blessed relief it was to discover that +/-10% above the recommended word count is the standard deviation built into most assignments, as I usually used up every single word of that additional allowance. While I understand that lecturers do not have the time - and probably, the will - to read pages and pages of submitted writing, when they have dozens of such assignments to read, editing down my written content was one of the main challenges that I have had to overcome.
However, there is something extremely satisfying about being able to rewrite and restructure a document, to remove the obstacles of repetition and redundancy, so that it (hopefully) flows in a coherent fashion. Nowhere was this more evident than in the assignment for module TW5221 when we were required to provide both a descriptive (50 words) and an informative summary (200 words) of a lengthy article (10,000+) without losing any of the intended meaning of the original content.
What started out as a daunting challenge ended up being one of the more enjoyable assignments of last year. Tweaking and re-tweaking written content is not a skill that I am an expert in, as my background is in Science, so I had not written a word-count restricted essay in years. While I agonized over every single word, fussing over what to include and what to omit, I got there in the end - +10%, of course!
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"I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one." ~ Blaise Pascal
One of the main challenges for me in the various module assignments for this course, was sticking to the prescribed word count. What a blessed relief it was to discover that +/-10% above the recommended word count is the standard deviation built into most assignments, as I usually used up every single word of that additional allowance. While I understand that lecturers do not have the time - and probably, the will - to read pages and pages of submitted writing, when they have dozens of such assignments to read, editing down my written content was one of the main challenges that I have had to overcome.
Of course, we all think that every single word we write is brilliant so having to adopt a scorched earth policy of 'slash and burn' when you are twice the recommended word allowance, took almost the same amount of time as writing the original content in the first place. Then again, I have always been of the opinion that it is better to be able to pare down, then try to pad up; as with the latter scenario, you are in danger of venturing into 'waffle' territory.
However, there is something extremely satisfying about being able to rewrite and restructure a document, to remove the obstacles of repetition and redundancy, so that it (hopefully) flows in a coherent fashion. Nowhere was this more evident than in the assignment for module TW5221 when we were required to provide both a descriptive (50 words) and an informative summary (200 words) of a lengthy article (10,000+) without losing any of the intended meaning of the original content.
What started out as a daunting challenge ended up being one of the more enjoyable assignments of last year. Tweaking and re-tweaking written content is not a skill that I am an expert in, as my background is in Science, so I had not written a word-count restricted essay in years. While I agonized over every single word, fussing over what to include and what to omit, I got there in the end - +10%, of course!
______________________________________________________________________________
"I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one." ~ Blaise Pascal
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