ACT Preparation / Unit 4 ACT 0326 review, 2 to 3 minutes
One Paragraph, Tightened
The idea
This unit's choices serve one goal: the exact word, and no extra ones. Concision cuts what adds no meaning: filler phrases, weak verb-and-noun pairs, there-is openings, and redundant words that repeat a meaning already given. It never cuts content, so a shorter choice wins only when nothing is lost. Precision prefers concrete nouns and exact verbs, the active voice when the doer is known and matters, and the passive when the doer is not the point. Emphasis falls at the end of a sentence. Style keeps the tone the passage sets, with no slang in a formal passage and no inflation in a plain one, and neutral terms over biased ones. Commonly confused words are chosen by the job they do, never by how they sound.
In practice
Worked example: one paragraph, four repairs. "In the event that visitors arrive before noon, there are guides who will explain how the mill worked. The mill was built by settlers in 1840, and it's wheel still turns. The water that powers the wheel is collected together in a pond. Visitors say the tour is totally epic." First: in the event that becomes if, and the there-are opening goes: "If visitors arrive before noon, guides will explain how the mill worked." Second: it's expands to it is, which does not fit, so its. Third: collected already means gathered together, so together goes. Fourth: totally epic breaks the paragraph's plain tone, so "memorable" replaces it. The passive in the second sentence can stand: the mill is the paragraph's subject, not the settlers.
Where people slip
Two cautions carry forward. Every cut and every substitution is checked against the passage: a shorter choice that drops a fact, or a vivid one that adds a fact, is wrong however good it sounds. And sound is no guide to confused words or to redundancy; both need the meaning test. The next unit moves from the sentence to the passage: whether a sentence belongs at all, and what it does for the writer's purpose.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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