Do as I Say...

By J.D. Ray · Feb 16, 2019 · ·
  1. It's funny how I can identify and help correct wordiness in others' work, but not in my own.
    Iain Aschendale likes this.

Comments

  1. GrahamLewis
    That's why we all need to have others look at our work -- we can't always see the cold type for the hot ideas.
      NathanRoets and J.D. Ray like this.
  2. Iain Aschendale
    True for most of us I think. If you aren't already, a trick that I learned in college is to try and view your work in a different format, somehow it tricks your brain into noticing mistakes. I always print out my pieces, seeing them on the page is different than seeing them on the screen, it's helped me with punctuation, the occasional doubled word, and general phrasing quite often. Someone here suggested that the same effect might be achieved by changing the font and opening in a different program than the one you wrote it in. Was it you that mentioned that Word will catch grammar errors that Scrivener doesn't? This isn't about the program's abilities, but about resetting your perceptions, although every little bit helps. Certainly with longer works running through a few different fonts would be more economical than printing copy after copy.
      NathanRoets, Harmonices and J.D. Ray like this.
  3. J.D. Ray
    Yep, that was me.
  4. J.D. Ray
    Regarding wordiness and that grammar checking in Word, it was mostly (at least in my work) catching "misplaced" commas. I found that taking them out makes the sentences read "faster" (perhaps you were the one who suggested that term for the effect of the change), making them seem less "wordy".
      Iain Aschendale likes this.
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