Hello, we're thinking about concise writing again today. And I want to emphasize that concise writing in and of itself is not necessarily a goal that you need to buy into or should buy into. Sometimes there are very good reasons not to be concise. I think maybe in some disciplines people would argue against that idea. Some disciplines I think probably feel like concise writing is most important all the time. But anyways, in some disciplines it's okay not to have concision as your primary objective. And I would also remind you that concise writing, or looking for ways to increase conciseness in your writing should happen towards the end of the writing process rather than at the beginning. So, it's not until you figure out what you want to say that you can then think about how you're going to say it. That said it is important to think about the advantages of concise writing, because it can clarify your ideas and communicate them very clearly to readers. So that they don't have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what you mean. One of the strategies we're going to think about today, there are many strategies just for concise writing. One of them is something that we call, that is called Prepositional Phrases. And as it all that you're learning in this class or thinking about in terms of writing, there's no hard and fast rule, and you want to kind of qualify everything. I want to make sure I emphasis, propositional phrases are fine, they 're important elements of the English language. You do want to make use of propositional phrases at times. That said sometimes prepositional phrases are moments where you can increase clarity and reduce clutter in sentences. So the way that I learned prepositions in elementary school and grade school was a mountain. A teacher told me that if you think about a mountain. Here's our mountain. That any way of going to the mountain, or under the mountain, or through the mountain, or flying over the mountain. Being on the mountain, being in the mountain, those are all prepositions. There are probably other kinds of catchy ways of learning prepositions. There are a lot of prepositions, we're offering you links to see how many there are. But On the Watch List in particular, for ways that you can increase conciseness in your writing with prepositions. On the Watch List for our purposes today, you want to think about maybe this set of prepositions, in, of, about, over and to. And, again, unless the to is part of an infinitive construction of a verb. But these prepositions often can be moments where you can reduce clutter and make your writing more concise. However, I want to say again there's nothing wrong with this word, words like they're good words, so go ahead and use them. Sometimes, just sometimes you want to think about of the choices that you're making. Here's an example and I will show you the preposition of phrase and then ask you to consider a way to revise it. So, the idea of the student was good. And here is our prepositional phrase. And I know this might be hard, because I'm not even showing you how to do it, but I'm just going to ask you. Right now, go ahead and on your own, try to see how you would revise this sentence to eliminate that prepositional phrase, and make the sentence more concise. Welcome back, here's the way that I would revise this sentence. Instead of saying the idea of the student, I would take that out, add a possessive there and move this to before the idea. So it would become the students idea was good. Okay and in that case, I would suggest that there's really not much of a reason in this sentence. It seems that a person would prefer to use prepositional phrase rather than this marked concise version. I think this gets the point across more clearly. That's not always going to be the case, but in this case I think it is. Here's another example, I'm going to read this and this one is more complicated. It comes from our Duke University writing studio and it's a tough one. So I warn you in advance that this is kind of hard to figure out your way through it. But it's a good illustration a great illustration, in fact, of why prepositional phrases can be confusing for readers. The cause of our schools' failure at teaching basic skills is not understanding the influence of cultural background on learning. So let's a look, I'll identify with you some of the prepositional phrases. And then I'll ask you to take a try at revising it. So here's the cause of our schools. Failure at teaching, I'm fairly certain that at is a preposition, is not understanding the influence of cultural background on learning. So we have four prepositional phrases. And in addition, we have a construction of the verb, to be. Which is something we talked about in the video, enhancing sentence style. That also I suggest is in this case, maybe causing a little bit of confusion in a sentence. So go ahead and take a few minutes. I think I take few minutes to try to work here with through this sentence. And think about how you can figure out what this sentence is trying to communicate. And how it could be communicated in a more concise, effective way. Welcome back, I hope that was a fun challenge for you rather than a frustrating one. Here's the revision as our Duke University writing studio has done it. See, that wasn't fair because I didn't even have to try to revise it on my own. I knew the answer already. [LAUGH] Okay, what they did is, our schools have failed to teach basic skills because educators do not understand how cultural backgrounds influence learning. And I think there is not one prepositional phrase here. This is an infinitive of the verb, right? So it's not a prepositional phrase. And they've taken out, the cause of. And instead of the is, they've change that to understand, right, which is a more powerful verb. And they've made instead of, the influence of cultural background, they've change that into a verb to how cultural and backgrounds influence learning. So, I think that's a really powerful version of the same sentence. Let's look at one more example to continue illustrating the way the prepositional phrases might be revised. A revision of the program will result in increases in our efficiency in servicing of our customers. Okay, so preposition of phases, of the program will result, in increases, in our efficiency, in the servicing of our customers. So that's one, two, three, four, five, six. Six prepositional phrases, please take a minute and think about each of these six prepositional phrases. And see which ones if any or all that you'd like to revise and go ahead, and try to revise the sentence to eliminate or reduce prepositional phrases. Welcome back, here is the Duke University writing studio's revision of the sentence. If we revise the program, we can serve our customers more efficiently. Okay, and what they have done very successfully. Is, again in this sentence, there's not one prepositional phrase anymore. And if added an awesome verb, we can serve our customers more efficiently. And frankly, I don't think this sentence sounds any simpler, right. It's still an important concept that is being communicated. But it has lost that kind of like prepositional phrases, sometimes are affiliated with writers trying to sound really official or path their language. And kind of try to sound more sophisticated will result in, in our efficiency in the servicing of, right. That's like sounds like you're trying to be sound important. When in fact, what you should really rely on is that your sentence is important anyways, right. it's already important because you thought of it, and it's important for you to say it to readers. So have some more confidence in your actual sentences rather than relying on turns a phrase to convey the importance. Okay, so I hope that this illustrations have also indicated for you how time consuming it is. to really think about concise writing and polishing your sentences, and this editing phase. That's why you want your process of writing to have as much time as possible, because you want to spend time on this part. But you don't want to spend time on it before you're ready to spend time on it. And as writers, we all have limited time. So you can't comb through your entire paper and find every single preposition. [LAUGH] So maybe you just want to notice that of is the proposition you often turn to the most. So maybe you just want to do a find and select for that, and try to reduce your usage of that. Take small steps and good luck with revising, when needed, prepositional phrases to make your writing more concise.
