{"id":10954,"date":"2012-04-17T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=10954"},"modified":"2012-04-13T16:53:37","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T23:53:37","slug":"gmat-sc-wordy-vs-concise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/gmat-sc-wordy-vs-concise\/","title":{"rendered":"GMAT SC: Wordy vs. Concise?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Concision is a good thing on GMAT SC, but can you have too much of this good thing?<\/h2>\n

As a general rule on\u00a0GMAT Sentence Correction<\/a>\u00a0(and in life!), wordy is bad.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

1) Buck Mulligan, who was a somewhat chubby person but who bore his weight with a kind of dignity, came from the head of the staircase, and he was carrying a bowl full of soapy lather, and on the top the bowl was a mirror and also a razor, and the mirror and razor were crossed on the top of the bowl.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Yuck!\u00a0 Now, compare this:<\/p>\n

1) Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are good reasons why James Joyce chose the latter, not the former, for the first sentence of his masterpiece\u00a0Ulysses<\/em>.\u00a0 If the former had been the first sentence, few people would have wrestled with the rest of that notoriously difficult tome.<\/p>\n

Much in the same way, folks will lose focus reading your memos and reports in the business world if those documents are needlessly wordy.\u00a0 Business schools know this, which is why they value the Sentence Correction section of the GMAT.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Too Short: Words Crammed Together<\/h2>\n

Shorter is often better, but it's possible to get too short.\u00a0 One type of \"too short\" consists of words crammed together.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

2) The\u00a0Chicago plumber\u00a0was visiting Tallahassee.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

3) Frank parks his\u00a0firewood hauling truck\u00a0behind the fence.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

For example, in the first one: what exactly is a \"Chicago plumber\"?\u00a0 It implies that the entire city is some vast system of gaskets, and this guy specializes in keeping those municipal gaskets in shipshape.\u00a0 Of course, that's not what is meant. What is meant is: the plumber is\u00a0from\u00a0Chicago.\u00a0 Similarly, there are special kinds of trucks (e.g. fire truck, dump truck, etc.), but a \"firewood hauling truck\" is not one.\u00a0 Here are corrections to those sentences:<\/p>\n

2) The plumber from Chicago was visiting Tallahassee.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

3) Frank parks his truck, in which he hauls firewood, behind the fence.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Too Short: Illogical Equivalents<\/h2>\n

Another variety of \"too short\" consists of implying things are the same that just aren't.\u00a0 For example<\/p>\n

4) The time I love most is eating ice cream.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

5) The voice that scares me most is my father angry.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Admittedly, in colloquial speech, folks talk this way.\u00a0 On the GMAT, though, these are unacceptable.\u00a0 The first illogically implies \"eating ice cream\" is a specific \"time\", in the same way that Halloween or 2 pm is a specific time.\u00a0 The illogically equates a person, \u00a0the speaker's father, with a \"voice.\"\u00a0 The correct versions of these are a little longer:<\/p>\n

4) The time I love most is when I eat ice cream. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>(or, what contains essentially the same information . . . )<\/p>\n

4) I immensely enjoy eating ice cream.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

5) The voice that scares me most is that of my father when he is angry.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pay attention to ways these two kinds of \"too short\" constructions show up in everyday speech.\u00a0 When you hear one, write it down, and then try to correct it up to GMAT Sentence Correction standards.\u00a0 With practice, you will master the skill of making sentence short but not too short --- a skill that will serve you well on the real GMAT.<\/p>\n

Here's a practice GMAT Sentence Correction:\u00a0https:\/\/gmat.magoosh.com\/questions\/1104<\/a><\/p>\n

This post was written by Mike McGarry, GMAT Expert at Magoosh<\/a>, and originally posted here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concision is a good thing on GMAT SC, but can you have too much of this good thing? As a general rule on\u00a0GMAT Sentence Correction\u00a0(and in life!), wordy is bad.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,783,243,719,735],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-magoosh-blog","category-blog","category-sentence-correction-gmat","category-verbal-gmat-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10954"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10960,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10954\/revisions\/10960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}