HW101/HW101C Workshop 6 Uncluttered Writing Suggested answer key Reduce the following 75-word sentence to <12 words while

e retaining its gist. Sampling of answers from former students:

America supports losers! American policy has erred in giving aid to failed regimes. The White House has been giving aid to regimes that were subsequently defeated.

Edit the following paragraph by removing all the wordy There was or There were filler phrases. There was, indeed, plenty to see in the fading light of an autumn day. There was a small lawn surrounding a fish pond and edged with crazy paving. There was a succession of trellis archways leading from one carefully tended plot to another. There was a rose garden with a sundial where a few last roses still gleamed white on their leafless stems. There were hedges of beech, yew and hawthorn as gold and green backcloths to the banked chrysanthemums. The fading light of an autumn day offered plenty to see. Plenty could be seen in the fading light of an autumn day. A small lawn surrounded a fish pond edged with crazy paving. A fish pond edged with crazy paving was surrounded by a small lawn. A succession of trellis archways led from one carefully tended plot to another. Carefully tended plots were joined by a succession of trellis archways. In a rose garden with a sundial, a few last roses still gleamed white on their leafless stems. Hedges of beech, yew and hawthorn formed gold and green backcloths to the banked chrysanthemums.

Revise the following 309-word passage by cutting wordiness and undesirable repetition. Your final revision should comprise just one paragraph of about 120150 words. Many A large number of people enjoy reading murder mysteries regularly. As a rule, They these people are not themselves murderers, nor would they these people really ever enjoy seeing someone commit an actual murder, nor would most of them actually enjoy trying to solve an actual murder one. They probably enjoy reading murder mysteries because of this reason: they have found a way in order to escape from the monotonyous, boring routine of dull everyday existence. To such people the murder mystery is realistic fantasy. It is realistic because the people in the murder mystery characters are as a general rule believable as people. They are , not just made up pasteboard figures. It is also realistic because the character who is the hero, the character who solves the murder mystery, solves it not usually by trial and error and haphazard methods but by exercising a high degree of logic and reason. It is absolutely and totally essential that people who enjoy murder mysteries have an admiration fore the human faculty of logic. But murder mysteries are also fantasies. The people who read such books of fiction them play a game. It is a game in which they suspend certain human emotions. One of these human emotions that they suspend is like pity. If the reader stops to feel pity and sympathy for sympathize with each and every victim that is killed or if the reader stops to feels terrible horror horrified that such a thing could happen in our world of today, that person will never enjoy reading murder mysteries. The devoted reader of murder mysteries keeps uppermost in mind at all times the goal of arriving solving the mystery through logic and observation at the final solution to the mystery offered in the book. It is a game with life and death. Whodunits hopefully help the reader to hide from the hideous horrors of actual life and death in the real world.