Don't be 'wordy'

When writing academic papers, it's the choice of words - not the number of words - that really counts.

by Tony Hollick

If you're struggling to reach a minimum required number of words for a paper, it's tempting to sometimes add more words or create longer sentences rather than adding more researched claims to achieve the word length required. ‘Wordiness’ is when you use too many words to make your point.

For your paper to not be ‘wordy’, remove all the extra, unnecessary words in every sentence. By reducing your word count, you can insert more claims, facts or examples to make your paper stronger!

Example

Consider the following examples. Which sentence is most preferred in academic writing?

A. Fortunately, some 70 years ago and shortly after the atrocities of the second world war, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or UDHR for short, was signed off by most of the then member countries in the United Nations General Assembly at that time, so that the UN’s newly proposed UDHR was, in turn, adopted in the month of December in 1948.

B. Fortunately, shortly after the atrocities of the second world war, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly with the approval of a majority of the then member countries in the month of December in 1948.

C. Shortly after the atrocities of the second world war, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948.

D. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948.

If you chose answer C or D, you’re right. In fact, answer A has so many unnecessary words that even I fell asleep by the third line!

Practice

Now you try. Remove all the unnecessary words from the following sentences to make them less wordy and more academic.

1. It is widely accepted that the region of Southeast Asia is a large geographical area which consists of many countries that are located to the south of the East Asian nations of China and Japan, to the east of the South Asian nations of India and Sri Lanka, to the west of the largely tribal nation of Papua New Guinea and to the north of the Commonwealth of Australia.

2. Unfortunately, and it is with great dismay, that we can find that many of the developing countries in the world in these days (and in the past too actually) typically or commonly have really very low levels of access to water, sanitation and hygiene, which is also widely referred to in research as WASH or WaSH (i.e. Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), for their people.

3. The countries and nations on the African continent which are fortunate enough to have achieved high growth rates (that is, relative to other African states) are those ones which have typically had more stable governments and been more stable in terms of their politics in general.

Possible Answers

These are suggested answers only; other answers are possible.

1. Southeast Asia consists of countries located south of China and Japan, east of India and Sri Lanka, west of Papua New Guinea and north of Australia.

2. Developing countries typically have very low levels of access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH).

3. The African states which enjoy high rates of growth tend to be those which have been politically stable.