Empoword

Appendix A: Concepts and Strategies for Revision 467 Here are a few strategies: • Read out loud, • Ask yourself what a sentence is doing, rhetorically, • Combine like sentences, phrases, or ideas, • Use signposts, like topic-transition sentences (for yourself during revision and for your reader in the final draft), and • Be specific—stay cognizant of your scope (globally) and the detail of your writing (locally). To practice revising for fluff, workshop the following excerpt by yourself or with a partner. Your goal is not to cut back to the smallest number of words, but rather to prune out what you consider to be fluff and leave what you consider to be detail. You should be able to explain the choices you make. There was a time long before today when an event occurred involving a young woman who was known to the world as Goldilocks. On the particular day at hand, Goldilocks made a spontaneous decision to wander through the forest, the trees growing up high above her flowing blonde pigtails. Some time after she commenced her voyage, but not after too long, she saw sitting on the horizon a small residency. Goldilocks rapped her knuckles on the door, but alas, no one answered the door. Therefore, Goldilocks decided that it would be a good idea to enter the unattended house, so she entered it. Atop the average-sized table in the kitchen of the house, there were three bowls of porridge, which is similar to oatmeal. Porridge is a very common dish in Europe; in fact, the Queen of England is well-known for enjoying at least one daily bowl of porridge per day. Goldilocks, not unlike the Queen of England, enjoys eating porridge for its nutritional value. On this day, she was feeling quite hungry and wanted to eat. She decided that she should taste one of the three bowls of porridge, from which steam was rising indicating its temperature. But, because she apparently couldn’t tell, she imbibed a spoonful of the porridge and vocalized the fact that the porridge was of too high a temperature for her to masticate and consume: “This porridge is too hot! Appendix A Endnotes Complete citations are included at the end of the book. 136 Reverse outline by Jacob Alexander, Portland Community College, 2018. Reproduced with permission from the student author.