Writing Intelligible English Prose: Conciseness vs. Verbosity

When writers perform writing, their primary aim is to communicate instantly with readers and to achieve this they need to be clear and concise because conciseness provides an upper hand for the writer in disseminating the message. An overwritten text filled with redundant words may distract readers, hence may prompt quit-reading; therefore, academic writers should avoid wordiness. Accordingly, this study aims to help non-native writers of English eliminate wordiness in their papers; inform them about the importance of conciseness for vigorous writing, and make some suggestions on how to trim their gratuitous writing style. In line with that, this study investigated the introductions, where conciseness and clarity are crucial, of a hundred research articles written in English by Turkish speakers, and then examples of redundancy were pruned to a word or shorter clauses, or removed at all. Finally, both original and modified texts were presented to fifty readers of English to determine which version of texts is easier to understand. The results revealed that Turkish writers of English use unnecessarily long phrases/sentences and expletives/it clauses in their papers, and Turkish readers of English favour conciseness.

ANLAŞILABİLİR İNGİLİZCE ESER YAZIMI: KISA MI UZUN MU YAZMALI?

Bir yazarın yazmadaki başlıca amacı okuyucuyu vakit kaybetmeden konu hakkında bilgilendirmesidir. Bunu başarmak için yazarın açık ve kısa bir dil kullanması gerekmektedir çünkü kısa dil kullanımı sayesinde içeriğin iletilmesi daha rahat hale gelmektedir. Gereksiz sözcüklerle doldurulmuş bir akademik yazım okuyucunun dikkatini dağıtabilir ve okumayı bırakmasına neden olabilir. Bu yüzden gereksiz sözcük kullanımı akademisyenlerin kaçınması gereken bir durumdur. Bu doğrultuda, çalışma makale yazarken gereksiz sözcükleri atma konusunda anadili İngilizce olmayan yazarlara yardımcı olmayı, öz yazım konusunda onları bilgilendirmeyi ve fazla sözcüklerden nasıl kurtulabilecekleri konusunda onları aydınlatmayı hedeflemektedir. Bu çalışma sade ve öz olmanın önemli olduğu yüz araştırma makalelerinin giriş kısımlarını analiz etti; gereksiz uzun olan cümlecikleri tek kelimeye veya daha kısa cümleciklere dönüştürdü veya onları tamamen cümleden çıkardı. Son olarak hem uzun halleri hem de kısaltılmış halleri İngilizce eser okuyan elli akademisyene dağıtıldı ve hangisinin daha okunaklı olduğu soruldu. Sonuçlar İngilizce yazan Türk yazarların çalışmalarında gereksiz uzun cümlecik, cümle ve gereksiz giriş cümlecikleri kullandıkları ve okuyucuların kısa yazımları tercih ettikleri tespitine vardı.

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