Week 13 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 13 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 70–84 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more practice, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–20 min total)

• PB Writing Hacks: The Reverse Outline — Pamela Bedore
• Writing Concisely: Eliminating Wordiness — theLecturette
• Conciseness and Eliminating Wordiness — Wingspan Writing Guides

① What should I fix first? Global revision and the reverse outline

Chapter 13, Section “Separate global revision from local editing” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Global revision and the reverse outline” · Remember: fix what the draft says and how it is built first, and polish sentences only after that.

• Writing Revisions: Global vs. Local — Lauren Pisanelli — a short guide to telling big-picture problems from sentence-level ones when you revise your own paper or review a classmate's. Sort each problem it names into the chapter's two passes as you watch. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
• Revision — Rhetoric Center — separates big concerns such as thesis and organization from small ones such as punctuation, then walks through feedback, reverse outlining, and a thesis check. Use it while working through the Week-13 module overview. (reading, 6–9 min)
• PB Writing Hacks: The Reverse Outline — Pamela Bedore — a quick introduction to the reverse outline as a check on a draft's organization. Try it on your own draft and read only your notes afterward, the way the chapter does with the running draft. (video, 8 min) (captions: automatic)

② Which words can go? Cutting deadwood without cutting ideas

Chapter 13, Section “Cut deadwood, not ideas” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Concision and the 25 percent challenge” · Remember: every word should earn its place, and a cut that removes a claim is not concision.

• Writing Concisely: Eliminating Wordiness — theLecturette — names the common kinds of wordiness and shows how a wordy passage can be revised. This builds on Week 5's work with writing in the rhetorical modes, where concision first appeared as the cure for over-writing. (video, 7 min) (captions: automatic)
• Conciseness and Eliminating Wordiness — Wingspan Writing Guides — a short page of wordy-and-concise pairs: plain words for inflated ones, sentences that drop an empty "there are" opening, verbs in place of noun forms, and cuts of repeated or redundant words. Match each fix you can to one of the chapter's four kinds of deadwood, and notice which fixes fall outside them. (reading, 3–5 min)
• Writing Concise Sentences: Reducing Wordiness — Writing Better — a longer walk through sentence-level cuts, worked one example at a time. Pause before each fix and try your own cut first, then check that no claim went missing. (video, 13 min) (captions: automatic)

③ How should my sentences sound? Variety, emphasis, and voice

Chapter 13, Section “Vary the sentences” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Variety, emphasis, voice, and the machine” · Remember: mix sentence lengths, put what matters at the end, and choose active or passive by asking whether the reader needs the doer.

• Coordination and Subordination — Reading & Writing Center — the two ways to combine sentences, with the joining words for each and where the commas go. Compare its comma rules with the two comma items in the chapter. (reading, 3–5 min)
• Coordination & Subordination — Vantage Learning — a short explainer that sorts out joining equal ideas from making one idea depend on another. Afterward, combine two short sentences from your own draft each way. (video, 7 min) (captions: automatic)
• Passive Voice — The Writing Center — a full handout that opens by clearing up myths about the passive and then explains how to spot it and when it is the right choice. Read it for when the doer matters and when it does not. (reading, 10–15 min)
• Active Versus Passive Voice in Scientific Writing — Scientific Writing with Karen L. McKee — when a research writer should keep the doer in front and when the passive serves a methods section better. Hold it up against the chapter's lab sentence about the samples. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Conciseness — Online Writing Lab (OWL) — a reference page on choosing the most effective words rather than the fewest; use it to check a cut you are unsure about this week, and skip anything beyond word-level and sentence-level concision. (reading, 5–7 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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