Feb 9, 2014

Junks in Writing

Today I attended Mr. Chuah's Academic writing workshop. There's one particular part which I'd like to share, and it's about "Cliches & Redundancies".

Mr. Chuah (2013) mentioned that Malaysians' tend to overuse several phrases:
1. in this globalized/ICT era
2. in the society nowadays
3. by hook or by crook
4. part and parcel
5. cooperation from all parties.

I felt that No.5 is my usual go-to conclusion phrase when I can't think of anything better to conclude. The term "Nowadays" is actually a slang, and the formal word should be "Recently". Hmmm.

One more thing is that we fell in love with using "for example", "for instance", "such as", etc when citing examples. Mr. Chuah mentioned that these phrases could be omitted. It's refreshing to know as I always find it hard to replace these terms with other words before starting to give examples.

Overall, the course is beneficial to my writing. As much as I enjoyed this minimalist approach, I hope I could take note of my works and start reducing redundancies. Gambate!

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