Keep necessary detail from becoming a tangle
Read for meaning first. Select a highlighted word if you want a closer look.
An elaborate repair-cafe poster mapped every step from checking in a broken lamp to collecting the finished item at the exit. Repeated arrows threatened to convolute the otherwise useful sequence by sending readers back to stages they had already completed. The coordinator's roundabout explanation added another difficulty, beginning with the history of the cafe before reaching the first action visitors needed to take. A volunteer followed the diagram as if arriving for the first time and marked every place where the route became uncertain.
The elaborate poster contained useful detail, so the volunteers kept the individual stages while simplifying their connections. Adding separate exceptions to every arrow would only convolute the route again, making readers track several competing paths. The coordinator abandoned the roundabout introduction and began by pointing to the check-in table, then explained each later step in order. Testing the revision with an unfamiliar reader showed where detail helped and where the arrangement of that detail made a simple task unnecessarily difficult.
Before you move on
Look away from the passage. Can you explain each focus word in your own words?
Original fictional passages for vocabulary practice.