Trimble Chapter 6 Diction

In Trimble’s Ch. 6 “Diction”, he exhorts writers to pay attention particularly to several categories of diction. Which advice felt rather familiar or perhaps useful to you with respect to your own writing? Why?

            One of the three points Trimble makes is to be concise in your writing.  I firmly believe I need to improve on this because I beat around the bush trying to make my point, then I make my point.  I need to write less fluff and get right to the main point.  Being concise is important because you do not beat a dead horse over and over and over again with the reader, and you make it easier to read by being concise.  By having 25 or more words in a sentence is exhausting for a reader and they will likely brush by the sentence instead of giving it the true scrutiny and care it deserves.  Sure a 33-word sentence may look impressive in an essay; however, if you are just putting words in for the sake of adding words, it adds absolutely nothing to your essay.  I could have easily said that writing concisely is beneficial because “less is more”, meaning, the less you write and the faster you get to the main point, the more effective your piece will be due to the fact it is easier to follow and understand, but then I would not have had this rather comical, well at least in my opinion, paragraph.  Moreover, we are supposed to write for twelve minutes straight, so I need to add fluff to this paragraph, thus taking away from the conciseness; this paragraph could have easily been these last 2 sentences that contain 102 words.  Wow, what a great example of the importance of conciseness!

            Nothing adds flavor to your paper or paragraph like exhilarating verbs.  By using verbs to add flair to your sentence, you can make your sentence better!  In addition, it is important to use the active voice instead of the passive voice.  I firmly believe using the active voice has allowed me to make better sentences, thus improving my writing.  The active voice allows us to move our thoughts forward and introduces the subject of the sentence earlier than the passive voice; this allows the reader to follow the sentence with ease.  I have heard this writing tip throughout my whole life, specifically from my AP Euro teacher.  She would always write “use active voice and POV (point of view)” on everyone’s papers. 

            Last, you want your writing to be fresh, yo.  I agree with this statement.  By throwing a surprise word in your work will come as a shock to the reader and they will appreciate it if you add the fresh phrase correctly.  You need to choose a worthy word to enhance the sentence.  Its like playing Scrabble.  Don’t waste a triple word spot on a word like “cat”, but use it for “xi” or “zee”.