Revising with Williams

Students who have been certified by a signatory community college as having satisfied the general education requirements of the MACRAO Agreement will be required to fulfill only the three additional requirements now a part of Eastern Michigan University’s general education requirements: a quantitative reasoning course (unless waived by ACT or SAT scores); a U.S. diversity or global awareness course, and a learning beyond the classroom experience course. This agreement applies only to general education and does not exempt the community college students from meeting all curriculum and graduation requirements.

(Obtained from the MACRAO Agreement, Community College Relations, under the Transfer section.)

Revision: Students with certification by a signatory community college that the have satisfied general education requirements of the MACRAO Agreement are required to fulfill only three additional requirements included in Eastern Michigan University's general education requirements: a quantitative reasoning course (unless waived by ACT or SAT scores); a U.S. diversity or global awareness course, and a learning beyond the classroom experience course. Community college students are not exempt from meeting all curriculum and graduation requirements as they apply to general education requirements.

This paragraph is very wordy. I get the sense that it is written in a language that is broad and general. It almost sounds like “legalese.” I imagine that the language in this paragraph will need to be interpreted for many parents, transfer students, and advisors. As I revised the paragraph there were many factors I looked at. First, the sentences are written in a way that explain what the requirements are, but not in a reader friendly way. I would describe this paragraph as “turgid.” Because there is so much information that is necessary to understanding the requirements, I could not cut down on the word count, but I revised some of the sentences to make the paragraph easier to read. In chapter five of Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, Joseph Williams has a rule that, “A coherent paragraph will usually have a single sentence that clearly articulates its point” (82). What I tried to do with the first sentence was make student certification and the satisfaction of requirements points that need particular attention paid to them. So, I changed the sentences in ways that made them more active. The last sentence deals with community college students not being exempt from fulfilling all general education requirements. This is very important information that needs to be highlighted, so I changed the sentence so that community college students is the main topic of the sentence.