Need advice…

Does this happen in more than one subject? You write very well here, not even a typo. But it's still possible that on longer assignments you have some general problems that don't show up here.

Or it could be the way you approach assignments so that no matter how you say it, what you say isn't what the prof wants to see. You previous post suggests some insecurity in your ability to sort out the right ideas and put them together in the right way.

If you like, PM a short sample to me, no more than one page. I've been tutoring and mentoring people for decades so I can probably at least help you identify the specific problem--content, style, approach, reasoning, premise, etc. That will make it easier to decide where to go next.

 

One of the most important things you just have to suck up and put behind you in order to succeed is embarrassment. You can't afford to let it keep you from getting ahead.

I had the same problem you do: I wrote fairly well but my writing was too long. My wife has an M.A. in English Literature so she was able to help me with that. There is no easy trick. Ripping out entire large sections of text would certainly be an "easy trick" and as you discovered it doesn't work.

You have to start at the detail level and work your way outward. Look at each individual sentence and find a way to shorten it. I promise there is a way. Absolutely nobody writes so perfectly that they can't find a way to make a sentence shorter. Start with your rhetorical style: remove all editorializations, clever figures of speech, and eloquent constructions. It is what you are saying that should attract the reader's attention, not how you're saying it, assuming you're not trying to write poetry. If you have a list of four words or phrases to illustrate a point, throw out the least important one and reduce it to three. If three just doesn't illustrate it well then you need to pick better ones. This will not only make your writing shorter but also better.

Then go to the paragraph. Have you got three sentences doing the work of two? The same subject repeated in several sentences? Have you got several sentences that say more or less the same thing with only subtle differences? Make two new sentences that highlight this subtle difference more clearly with fewer examples. If you're listing a whole range of possibilities, pick the two most extreme examples, tell the reader that these are indeed the extremes, throw the rest out, and let them do the interpolation.

Engage the reader's intelligence. This will make your work more interesting to read and it will also increase the likelihood of the reader actually understanding your point when they're done.

Then go up to the level of the section and do the same thing with the paragraphs. Does your logic flow smoothly? Does each paragraph logically follow the preceding one or are there a bunch that don't particularly need to be in any sequence? Apply the same principle of expressing your facts, hypotheses, conclusions, etc. in a logical order so that the reader's reasoning skill is called into play. And apply the same principle of letting two extreme examples define a range. When the reader understands your premise they'll be able to apply your reasoning to examples of their own, and to correct an old aphorism, "familiarity breeds content."

Keep going up to the next level of organization until you're looking at the whole paper, and by now you understand how to apply this same technique at the highest level. Have you said the same thing more than once? Don't bore the reader and don't insult their intelligence. If you're afraid they might not have understood you the first time you said something then the right thing to do is go back and say it better instead of saying it a different way a second time.

Two thousand words is eight pages; that's a lot of words. It gives you a lot of room to work. After years of my wife's tutelage I can now take almost anything I've written and cut it in half. If concision is really important I give it to her and she cuts that down to one third of the original.

Obviously this takes time. I don't spend too much time on SciForums so I have more time for the reports I give my boss and the letters I send to newspapers, and that's why the things I write here don't always seem to conform to my own rules. You can afford to spend the time because the limit you're working under is space, not time.

I'd still like to see a page of something you're written so I can give you more specific suggestions for identifying and improving your own particular writing style.

Your colleagues here seem to think I'm a good mentor and the one thing a good mentor never does is embarrass people.

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