When working on a piece of writing coming from a Middle-Eastern context, you, as a copyeditor, may face more frequent cases of prolixity, compared to those coming from a Western one where brevity is practiced and admired.

The case is more challenging when it comes to academic writing.

Here are two situations that create prolixity, with examples:

Situation 1: Noting figures in both numeral and spelled forms.

• Example: This paper experimented the above hypothesis by selecting thirty-six (36) students as participants.

Situation 2: Using synonyms together.

• Example: Digital forensics essentially focuses and concentrates on capturing and analyzing cybercrimes.

The Reason Behind

From old days, the Arabic and Persian literature, the two mainstreams in the Middle East, considered prolixity as a means of eloquence, called ‘Itnaab’ (in both Arabic and Persian), by which a prose writer could show their high skills at using language, thereby grabbing audiences’ admiration. Threading words and phrases of the same meaning often in a paralleled way and, at the same time, using the power of rhyme and rhythm in prose, used to create a sense of magnificent eloquence. It has made these languages really charming and well decorated, but at the expense of accuracy.

A type of Itnaab: ‘Eizaah Ba’d Al-Ibhaam’, which means clarity after ambiguity. It refers to the use of an ambiguous language at first, then making it clear for readers and, this way, making them happy for jumping out of ambiguity; a sense that they could not experience and get delighted with if they were provided with clarity from the first step. The writer assumed that such delight would help the audience learn and then memorize the subject better.

Such literary conventions caused the Eastern writing style to be writer oriented, rather than reader oriented; a dichotomy where the latter is more desired when it comes to the English writing style.

To end with, a challenge for copyeditors (particularly those working in non-fiction genre) who edit the texts authored by Eastern writers is detecting such literary conventions and make the writing pieces well prepared for publishing in an English context.

Not to mention that this post does not claim the superiority of one language over the others; it just talks about the differences between them, with respect to all.