Paul Roberts How To Say Nothing In 500 Words Summary

In Writedge, the minimum word limit is 325 words. But 325 words are barely enough to produce a content-rich article that is the standard in Writedge. For newbies like me, it would be difficult to be able to produce a 500-word article without doing some “little” cheating. That “little” cheating is making the content seem long but in reality, it lacks content. It often leads to our articles being rejected because it is weak in content.

I’ve come across an article titled, “How to say Nothing in 500 Words”[1] by Paul Roberts. It is an essay giving advice about writing. It tells us things that we should know about being a good writer. His essay centers on college composition but it can also be applied when writing an article for Info Barrel. I‘ve taken his advice.
It is not because of the problem to fill in the 500 words. Excessive timidity means using expressions such as “in my opinion”, “in my point of view” among others. I admit that I use these expressions and I do it because I’m a student and feel that my opinion is somewhat inexperienced. I learned from Paul Roberts that using these expressions too often can be dangerous. Yes, I am inexperienced but I don’t have to write about it throughout the article. You can put it in once or twice and that is enough. If you want to call a fool a fool then do so.If you put too much of those expressions, how will you convince the readers to believe in you if you flaunt your incompetence.

Beware of Pat Expressions

I’m not an expert in this area because even I cannot distinguish the difference. All I can explain is that “pat expressions” are tags such as “all things being equal”, “to the ends of the earth” and “over my dead body” are among the expressions. They are clichés and should be used when we can’t think anymore. Often we use these expressions naturally when we write so we should familiarize ourselves with such expressions to avoid them.

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