Eliminating Wordiness

Although she had never painted before, Elena decided to try her hand at watercoloring. She bought a variety of brushes, several tubes of paint, and a pad of textured paper. She then proceeded to paint a picture of a landscape scene that depicted the mountains.

Which choice is the most concise and grammatically correct replacement for the underlined portion?

In 132 CE, the Chinese polymath Zhang Heng presented the imperial court with a vessel designed to register earthquakes from afar. Due to the fact of the device's interior mechanism, which utilized a central pendulum that was suspended and hanging inside, it could detect the direction of a distant tremor. This invention allowed officials to dispatch aid to affected provinces immediately, long before messengers could arrive on foot.

Which choice is the most concise and grammatically correct version of the underlined portion of the sentence?

In 1945, self-taught engineer Percy Spencer was working on active radar sets at the Raytheon corporation. While standing near an operating magnetron, he noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had begun to melt. Due to the fact that he was curious and interested in finding out why this happened, Spencer decided to test other foods, including popcorn kernels, which quickly became the world's first microwaved popcorn.

Which choice is the most concise and grammatically correct option for the underlined segment?

In 1948, graduate student Bernard Silver overheard a grocery store executive asking for a system that could automatically record product information at checkout. Silver shared this request with his friend Norman Joseph Woodland. Woodland, who was completely fascinated and also deeply intrigued by the request, subsequently decided that he would move to Florida in order to focus on developing a solution.

Which of the following is the most effective and concise choice for the underlined portion of the sentence?

In the summer of 1967, postgraduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell was analyzing data from a newly constructed radio telescope. She noticed a faint, repeating signal in the charts that pulsed with astonishing regularity. Due to the fact that the signals recurred at such highly periodic intervals of time, some astronomers initially wondered if they had detected a transmission from an extraterrestrial civilization.

Which option is the most effective choice for the underlined portion of the sentence?

In 1928, Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming returned to his laboratory and noticed that a mold had contaminated one of his petri dishes. This mold was a substance that possessed the ability to destroy the surrounding bacteria, leading to the discovery of penicillin.

Which of the following is the most effective replacement for the underlined portion of the sentence?

In 1941, Swiss engineer George de Mestral went for a walk in the woods with his dog. Upon returning, he noticed that burdock seeds had clung to his clothes and his dog's fur. Under a microscope, he saw that the seeds were covered in tiny hooks that attached to the small loops in the fabric. This discovery led to the invention of Velcro, which is a fastening system that is composed of two components: a hook side and a loop side.

Which of the following choices best replaces the underlined portion of the sentence?

In 1811, twelve-year-old Mary Anning and her brother Joseph discovered the fossilized skull of an ichthyosaur along the cliffs of Lyme Regis. At that point in time during those days, people did not yet understand the concept of extinction, so they initially assumed the skull belonged to a crocodile.

Which choice provides the most clear and concise wording for the underlined portion of the sentence?

In 1952, computer pioneer Grace Hopper completed the first compiler, a program that translated English-like instructions into machine code. Previously, programmers had to write code in tedious binary sequences. Hopper’s development, which was a major breakthrough in computer science, revolutionized programming by allowing software to be written in a way that was much easier and simpler for humans to read and write.

Which of the following options represents the most concise and grammatically correct version of the underlined portion?

To decipher Linear B, classicist Alice Kober built a massive database of paper cards, sorting them into grids to analyze the relationships between grammatical endings. By cataloging grammatical inflections, she determined that the unknown language was inflected, which meant that word endings changed depending on their grammatical function. This detailed card system of hers, which was highly structured and organized in a grid format, was what ultimately laid the groundwork for Michael Ventris to crack the script.

Which of the following alternatives to the underlined portion is the most concise and grammatically correct?

During the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Chief Engineer Washington Roebling became bedridden with decompression sickness, leaving his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, to step in and assist. She was responsible for taking on the duty of serving as the primary liaison, acting as a link between her husband and the on-site engineers. Over the next fourteen years, Emily mastered civil engineering, supervised daily operations, and successfully managed the completion of the monumental project.

Which choice is the most concise and grammatically correct way to write the underlined portion of the sentence?

The following passage contains an underlined portion.

In 1936, Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann published a pioneering paper that fundamentally altered our understanding of Earth's interior. Analyzing seismic waves from a recent earthquake in New Zealand, Lehmann observed that some P-waves, which should have been blocked by a completely liquid core, were instead reflecting off a distinct boundary. She reasoned that these waves could only behave in such a manner if Earth possessed a solid inner core surrounded by a liquid outer core. Before Lehmann's groundbreaking discovery, scientists had generally held the widely accepted consensus belief that the entirety of the planet’s core was composed of nothing but a single, uniform liquid layer.

Which option represents the most concise and grammatically correct way to write the underlined portion of the sentence?

In 1964, radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were troubled by a persistent, low-frequency buzz that their horn antenna at Bell Labs kept picking up. Originally believing the interference was caused by urban noise or pigeon droppings, [they spent months cleaning the equipment in an effort to make it clean and free from debris.] Only after exhausting all possibilities did they realize they had detected the cosmic microwave background radiation, the ancient echo of the Big Bang.

Which choice most clearly and concisely expresses the information in the underlined portion of the sentence?

Each autumn, millions of monarch butterflies embark on a long migration to central Mexico. During the time when they are flying on this journey, they rely on warm wind currents to glide through the air.

Which choice is the most concise and grammatically correct option for the underlined portion?

During a winter trip to New York City in 1903, Mary Anderson noticed that the streetcar driver had to open the front window pane constantly to wipe away the falling sleet. Upon returning to Alabama, she designed a manually operated swinging arm with a rubber blade [1]that was designed by her to clear away rain and snow from windshields in order to solve the visibility problem. Anderson was granted a patent for her device in 1903, but car manufacturers initially saw little commercial value in it.

Which choice most effectively and concisely replaces the underlined portion labeled [1]?

Early pencils were crude, consisting of graphite chunks wrapped in string. Later, Italian artisans pioneered the method of hollow-carving wooden sticks, and it was into these wooden sticks that they inserted the graphite. Today, pencils are manufactured worldwide using a blend of graphite and clay to create different levels of hardness.

Which of the following is the most effective edit to the underlined portion of the sentence?

The following sentence contains an underlined portion:

The librarians scanned each fragile page working in a way that was highly efficient and did not waste any time because they hoped to complete the project by Friday.

Which choice most effectively eliminates wordiness in the underlined portion?

Although early daguerreotypes captured incredibly sharp details, the long exposure times required subjects to sit perfectly still for several minutes. Photographers used metal head braces that were clamped behind the subject's head in order to keep the person from moving or shifting during the portrait session.

Which choice most effectively and concisely expresses the underlined portion of the sentence?

Consider the following passage:

In 1977, oceanographers exploring the Galápagos Rift made a startling discovery: deep-sea hydrothermal vents teeming with life. Previously, scientists had assumed that all marine ecosystems ultimately relied on sunlight for energy. However, these vents, emitting mineral-rich water at temperatures exceeding 600��F, supported complex communities of giant tube worms, blind crabs, and ghost-like fish. These organisms thrived in complete darkness, obtaining sustenance not from photosynthesis but from chemosynthetic bacteria, which are bacteria that generate energy by oxidation of chemical compounds, a process that produces energy from chemicals instead of from the sun.

Which of the following choices is the best edit for the underlined portion of the passage?

The following passage contains an underlined portion.

In 1856, while attempting to synthesize quinine, an antimalarial drug, eighteen-year-old chemist William Henry Perkin accidentally created mauveine, the first synthetic organic dye. At that point in time, natural dyes, which were extracted from plants and animals, were extremely costly to produce, and because of this, they were available only to the wealthy. Perkin's inexpensive, brilliant purple dye revolutionized the textile industry and birthed the modern chemical industry.

Which of the following is the best replacement for the underlined portion?