Editing at the Sentence Level Practice

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Editing at the Sentence Level Practice

Practice 1

Edit the following paragraph for clarity. Eliminate wordiness, unnecessary repetition, overly informal or overused language, the passive voice, and ambiguity.

I believe that the biggest and greatest challenge my generation will face will be ethical dilemmas created by scientific discoveries and advances. There has been a boatload of things discovered in this century, especially in the time period of the last few decades. Humankind is able to avail itself of a plethora of opportunities it heretofore was unable to take advantage of. But some very difficult ethical questions have been raised by these opportunities. They have given us new power over nature, but this power can easily be abused and misused.

Practice 2

Edit the following paragraph, replacing general words with more exact ones and creating variety in sentence structure. (Note: You may also have to revise for clarity to address some of the problems in this paragraph.)

My generation will have many problems. One is the feeling of being overwhelmed by technology. Another is that the generation gap is growing. Another is that there are more people than every before. There isn't enough room for everybody. There are also limited resources.

Answers

Practice 1

Individual revisions will vary, but you should have addressed the following problems in the paragraph.

Here's how the edited paragraph might look:

The greatest challenge my generation will face will be ethical dilemmas created by scientific advances. We have discovered so much in this century, especially in the last few decades. We have opportunities to do things we never thought possible before. But these opportunities have raised some very difficult ethical questions. These opportunities have given us new power over nature, but this power can easily be abused.

Practice 2

The following is an example of a successful edit.

My generation will face many problems. First is the problem of feeling overwhelmed by technology. Second, with the ever-increasing life span of human beings, the generation gap is widening. A third problem is the population explosion; there are more people on the planet than ever before, and the world population continues to grow exponentially, putting a squeeze on our habitable space. That leads us to a fourth problem: limited natural resources.