Yes, it’s Back to Concision, Again (26 of 30): Answer to ‘Circling Paragraph’ from 25 of 30
Remember, we are now looking at concision in a bigger way: by looking at the whole paragraph (rather than just at the sentence level). Let’s keep looking at the paragraph from the previous post, and cut all the circling stuff out of it. Let’s change it from that messy painting to an elegant one with clear style and content (like the above photo). The original paragraph is …
Another reason why people smoke is that it will make these smokers much more happy. There is a component in cigarettes known as nicotine. The brains of those who are addicted to smoking will be stimulated by this nicotine to generate a variety of chemical factors which keep them in a good mood. By doing this habit, people can begin to forget about any worries or pain which may be currently occurring in their lives.
[75 words]
I will cut this to ….
Another reason why people smoke is that they need the stimulation from the nicotine to forget worries and pain.
[19 words]
Huh? I cut so much out! Why? Because so many words …
Another reason why people smoke is that it will make these smokers much more happy. There is a component in cigarettes known as nicotine. The brains of those who are addicted to smoking will be stimulated by this nicotine to generate a variety of chemical factors which keep them in a good mood. By doing this habit, people can begin to forget about any worries or pain which may be currently occurring in their lives.
… add little or no information. I have underlined the words which are new. The rest of the paragraph is just words which repeat or do nothing.
‘Happy’ is similar to ‘stimulated’ which is similar to ‘in a good mood’.
‘Nicotine’ is the same as ‘generate a variety of chemical factors’ [By the way, is this true?]
‘Smoking’ is the same as ‘by doing this habit’.
The first words of these lists are all that we need. Combining the key and meaningful words, we get …
Another reason why people smoke is their dependence on the nicotine stimulus to temporarily obliviate their worries and pain.
[19 words]
75 words cut to 19. Wow! That first paragraph had so much repetition and unnecessary stuff. But now, let’s consider how to continue this sentence, and build a real paragraph in a strong and convincing way. Tip 16 of my book (‘Include Specific Support’) mentions a simple way to think, and we will look at that in the next post.
By the way, you can learn more about me at www.aisielts.com .