Improving Paragraphs: Effective Paragraphs

Description:
In questions that ask you to improve paragraphs, there are several key problem areas that merit attention. In particular, you should make sure that paragraphs avoid wordiness and redundancy, and also that they have logical, smooth transitions. These are issues you should pay attention to in your own writing, especially in your response to the essay question.

For example, the following sentence is unnecessarily wordy:

While the waves repeatedly crashed onto the beach again and again without stopping, his son had to rebuild his sand castle over and over.

An alternative to this sentence could be:

The waves crashed into his son's sand castles all afternoon.

Look at another example:

John was so lethargic, listless, and languid that he decided he wouldn't even stay for the end of the game.

An alternative to this sentence could be:

John's lethargy caused him to leave before the end of the game.

Writing that is direct and to the point carries the most impact. Avoid heaping multiple words or clauses with similar meanings together in a sentence. Use one well-chosen word to convey the intended meaning.

One way to simplify a sentence is to remove words that are redundant, or convey the same meaning. It is unnecessary to say "repeatedly over and over again" because repeatedly means "over and over again."

Another way to make your writing efficient and logical is to use transitional devices. Transitional devices relate sentences within a paragraph to one another, and also relate different paragraphs in your essay to one another. Essentially, good use of transitions makes the connections between your ideas explicit; don't let your reader miss a connection that you think is clear.

Learning Resources:
Review the following resources:

• Wordiness overview
• Transitions 1
• Transitions 2