Repetition In Writing

A small amount of repetition can help emphasize points and complement your righting but too much is boring. If you are like me, you likely over used a word or two in your writing. Most word processing software include mechanisms to help you overcome the problem. You can determine the number of times a particular word appears in your piece.

Tools are available to help authors find out how many times they use a word. Word frequency, is one such feature common in most word processors. For example in the first paragraph of this blog, I wrote the word, “you”, four times which seems like a lot in a mere sixty-three words. Wow, is that true? The word you is a pronoun. Say I chose to use a different word, like blue, so many times. Such use would be repetitious. This is what I’m talking about.

Some reiteration is necessary. Only so many words exist. It’s not as though you can use each word only one time. This method is a good way to find over utilized words.
Another thing you can use to cut back on repetitive wording, is the find application. This finds a selected word in your document and let you jump to it. This is quite useful when ferreting out instances where you may have passive voice. All you need do is search for words like was, were, had, and such.

Write your first draft and then use the apps I mentioned to find the weak spots in your work and fix them. Another thing you can do is read your work out loud. There is even an app which will read your words for you. Audibly hearing the work helps slow you down to the exact words you had written. Once you do so, you can figure out how they fit together or how close repeated words are to one another. I learned while revising a novel, I said the same thing twice in two sentences within the same part of a composition.

This is just one aspect of revision a writer needs to work on. Writers need to work on avoiding redundant words.Try reading the work aloud, which will find areas of reiterated concepts, word-frequency can identify restated words. Use the find tool to locate the words and find out if you can change the words to convey your meaning in a new way. Once you do so, you will be in a strong place and avoid the potential for dull text. No one wants their work to bore their readers. So do what you cat not to repeat yourself and you will do well.

About pebblepup

I am not one who is comfortable talking about myself but here goes. I enjoy writing, family history, and reading. I decided to do this blog because I wanted to try something new. I decided to make it a weekly blog because I wasn't sure that I could keep up with a daily one, and monthly seemed like I was writing a magazine. I think I did ok with my choices. You'll notice that there are not a lot of graphics on my site. That's because there are graphics plastered everywhere on the Internet and those sites sometimes take forever to load. This blog is a place where you can kick back, relax and be ready to be amused. At least I hope I willbamuse you. This blog is on a variety of subjects from my ficitional cat agency, the FFL, which is monthly, to instructional blogs to editorials, which are my opinions only. I admit that I don't know everything and could be wrong -- I frequently am. Now, stop reading about me and read what I have to say!