215 words into 150: cutting a funding letter without losing the case
A writing task asks for a 150-word letter in Karen (with the usual 10% leeway) to a local council officer, requesting $800 to run a Karen language weekend school for 25 children. Tharah's draft runs to 215 words. It opens with a proverb his grandmother uses, repeats 'we would be very happy and grateful' three times, describes each age group's progress in detail, uses the pronoun he would use with a close friend of his own age to address the officer, and contains one sentence copied almost word-for-word from the reading passage in Section 2. He has 20 minutes left and is pleased with the proverb.
1. Rank Tharah's cuts. What goes first, what stays, and what should a 150-word budget look like?
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Ranking by cost to the reader
- The three-fold repetition goes first. Repetition of gratitude adds no information and signals a writer unsure of what the letter is for.
- The age-group progress detail is trimmed to one concrete example. The officer needs evidence of demand, not a class report.
- The proverb is the contested one. Keep it only if it does real work - if it can be glossed in a few words and carries the request, such as a saying about children and inheritance. Otherwise it costs 20 words the officer does not need and risks a register clash in a formal funding letter.
- The copied sentence must go regardless of length (see the third task).
A workable budget for ~150 words
- Purpose + request and amount: 25
- Need, with the number of children: 30
- What the $800 buys: 30
- Why it matters to the council's area: 35
- Respectful close and contact: 15
- Slack: ~15
A shorter letter that answers who, how much, what for, why now outperforms a longer one that describes everything.
2. Explain the pronoun problem. How serious is it compared with a grammatical slip, and how should he fix it?
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What the pronoun does Karen pronoun choice encodes the relationship between speaker and addressee - relative age, status, distance and formality. The friend pronoun marks intimacy and equality. A council officer assessing a funding request is neither.
Why it matters more than a grammar slip
- A grammar error makes the writer look less proficient. A wrong pronoun can make the writer look either disrespectful or inappropriately familiar, which affects how the reader judges the request itself. In a letter whose entire purpose is to persuade a stranger to allocate money, that is a strategic error, not a cosmetic one.
- It is also easy to avoid: the register is set in the salutation and first line, so a single conscious decision governs the whole letter.
The fix
- Choose respectful, formal address for the salutation and hold it consistently.
- Check his draft does not drift back to the friend form in the closing paragraph, where writers relax.
- Save one proofreading pass specifically for address forms, separate from the grammar pass - they are a different kind of decision and easy to miss when reading for accuracy.
3. Why is the copied sentence a problem, and what is the method for reworking it under time pressure?
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Two separate problems
- Rules: borrowed wording lifted from stimulus material without attribution is treated as plagiarism in an examination. The cost is disproportionate to the words gained.
- Fit: a sentence written for a different text usually carries the wrong context - wrong numbers, wrong audience, wrong tense. Even when it is not detected, it often reads as a non sequitur.
Rework method (about three minutes)
- Read the source sentence and name its idea in three or four words of his own.
- Close the source. Put it face down or turn the page.
- Write the idea from his own letter's situation: his 25 children, his weekend, his $800.
- Add one detail only he could supply - a concrete consequence for the children.
- Reopen the source and compare. If the structure still mirrors it closely, restructure: change the order of the clauses or the subject of the sentence.
The reworked sentence is usually shorter, which also helps the word count.