At-Home Editing Technique to Improve Word Economy

This editing technique has proven to work well for the students I have who use it. Here are the steps:

1: Recognize: when language is too wordy (too complicated) it means you probably don’t know what you are trying to say yet.

2. Discover: what you want to say. In order to do this, ignore what you wrote, and try to verbalize what you mean in as many words as you need. Do this out loud. Forget what you wrote and just talk. 

3. Restate what you mean on paper within a word limit (ie., 15 or fewer). Try to do this either out loud or on paper - one way may work better for you.

4. Clarify and hone your language: If you are doing near-to-final editing, you should use an online thesaurus or dictionary program to verify that you have chosen precise, accurate words. 

Online Comma Instruction and Testing Resources

1. D'Youville College Online Writing Lab (OWL)

This site assumes the students' knowledge of some basic grammar terms, but it can be used for any level of student, high school and above. There are a series of six exercises covering each of the common comma usage problems covered in the instruction.

2. Capital Community College

Ten rules for comma usage are explained well here.  The site has an interactive Cloze quiz (fill-in-the-blank) for students to test themselves with comma usage problems. There is also an interactive quiz for students to test their skills on commas with introductory phrases, and another with coordinating conjunctions. This quiz on comma usage lets students insert commas where they belong in a paragraph and check their answers.

More writing helps are available, including a Guide to Grammar and Writing,  Principles of Composition, and a grammar FAQ page. Additional writing resources are listed here.