Verbal Economy

1. Bare Bones
   
1. The best summary expresses precisely and fully in as few words as possible all the major points of the reading.
2. Express ideas precisely and fully using as few words as possible in order to write a good summary.
3. In writing your summaries, the shorter the better, but be precise and thorough.
4. In summarizing, the more concise, precise, and thorough, the better.
2. Bones plus
1. When writing, many people are tempted to use more words than necessary. Especially in first drafts. But using unnecessary words and repeating yourself usually makes for bad prose, given that it muddies the water and does not add any more in the way of ideas or facts. In fact, it makes it harder to tell what the writing is about and what its focus is.
   
2. If you use a lot of words to express a given idea precisely and fully, your summary will necessarily suffer in quality, because you will not be able to say as much, and because you say less using more words, your ideas will not be as clear and focused.
3. Using more words than necessary is harmful, because you say less than you could have and often your ideas are thus less clear and focused.
4. The best way to be clear and focused in your prose is to say more using fewer words.
   
3. Bones plus baggage: lose the baggage.
   
1. Really wordy: Writing a summary necessarily involves using fewer words than the original document, whatever that document is. That is the nature of summaries. They 'summarize' things by saying the same thing in fewer words. Thus, when you write a summary for this class, you will have to use fewer words than the author did to express the same ideas. A further principle of summaries is the following: it turns out that precision and completeness are important in summaries. You can be precise, but not complete, or complete, but not precise (although that is harder to do: I have done it myself and seen it done, so be forewarned). So, if you, in writing the summaries which I have assigned for this course, use a large number of words and phrases, including many unnecessary ones and lots of verbiage that does not really contribute very much to the task at hand, then that will result in a summary that is not as good as if you had ...
2. Wordy: In writing summaries about things, there is a principle which you should apply. It is simple. If you, in writing your summaries, use a lot of words, including many unnecessary ones and lots of verbiage that does not contribute much to the task at hand, then that will result in a summary that is of lower quality than if you use a few precise and carefully chosen words to express an author's idea precisely and fully. By lower quality is meant vagueness and loquacity.
3. Better: Summaries are always shorter than the original, but they include the most important material in the original. Always keep in mind the need for precision and thoroughness balanced by the need for brevity when summarizing.
4. Best: Precision, concision, and completeness are the chief virtues of a summary. They are difficult. Verbal economy is the best way to achieve them all.

Good, Better, Best. Never let it rest, 'til your good is your better and your better is your best.