Clarity

Amazon

Suggest improvements for the highlighted problem area: The greatest of rivers begins with a small trickle from a glacier high in the Andes, 150 kilometers from the Pacific Ocean. This thin stream feeds into Lake Ninococha, which itself pours out as the Maranon River. After coursing through 1000 kilometers of the Andes, the Maranon descends into the vast rain forest of equatorial South America. Brazil covers most of this region. As it continues on, traveling 4000 kilometers to the east, it is joined by more than 1000 other tributaries to form the Amazon, which is regarded as being the mightiest of all rivers. Into the Atlantic Ocean it flows, carrying 100,000 tons of silt each hour and delivering enough water to fill 60 Olympic swimming pools each second. Answer: - Being Concise - The first rule of clear writing is to be concise. If a chapter in a book is unrelated to the rest of the book, it should not be included. If a paragraph in a report is redundant or adds nothing of value, it should be deleted. If a sentence seems out of place in a paragraph, it should probably be moved or erased. And if a word or phrase serves only to impress, it should be omitted or shortened. We should not be worried, however, if the first things we write down aren't perfectly concise. Clarity is best achieved with careful editing. Our opening paragraph needs some editing. It was obviously written to describe technical details of a river, but includes a sentence about a country: Brazil covers most of this region. This sentence is unnecessary. It is more an interruption than a useful technical detail. The opening paragraph is better off without it.

Write Guru