Extraneous Details Worksheets

Core Standard
Answer Keys Here

There are many times that writers are almost too descriptive. While their intention is clearly to paint a vivid and memorable picture for their readers, it can go overboard at times. This over explanation can almost confuse readers and get them thinking in a different direction. You will find that this especially distracting to readers of fiction because the author is painting this entire narrative. When you can identify details that are completely not necessary or helpful to a particular paragraph, we refer to those as extraneous details. They are not relevant and distract the reader from the primary purpose of your work. When you are writing, you often do not even realize that this is present in your work. You will identify this in the revision process often after you prepare your first draft. This series of worksheets will help you learn to recognize extraneous details that a padded in a series of pre-writing sentences. You will also learn how to correct this work to make it much smoother for readers.

Extraneous Details Worksheets To Print:

Too Much... - Does the detail serve a purpose? Is the detail interesting to readers? Does the detail fit in with the other details around it?

Punching Paragraphs - Identify which detail is extraneous.

Sentence Picker - Which sentence just goes overboard.

Bad Sentence - Cross out each sentence that does not belong in the paragraph.

Relevant? - Read each passage. Is the underlined sentence relevant to the passage?

One Line - You will evaluate if a sentence fits within a paragraph or if it should be pulled out.

X Does It - Read the main idea. Put an X next to each sentence that would be an extraneous detail in this paragraph.

Based on That - Cross out anything that just is not helpful here.

Editing Practice - You will review all of your own work here.

Full Passage - You will review a full reading passage here. A jump up from just paragraphs.

Review Sheet - We look at all the important things to remember here.

More Paragraphs - Where to put all of your problems with this in one.

Quick Review - We go through all of the skills that we have learned here.

Breaking Away From the Main Idea - Everthing must relate to the awesome main idea of: Talk Like a Pirate Day is a real holiday.

Gid Rid of It - Did you find any extraneous details in your paragraph? Explain why or why not.

How to Identify Extraneous Details and Make Corrections?


Being able to recognize these lackluster parts of sentence can help make our writing much more impactful. This type of writing can help us win over our readers quicker and in a celebrated manner. We will take a few minutes of your time to explain this process in detail to you through the use of an example.


Each sentence in our example is numbered so that you can follow along with the explanation.


Example Passage to Evaluate:


[1] It can be useful to have a home improvement store credit card to help with big purchases. [2] Over the past several decades, construction materials have gotten increasingly expensive. [3] There was a time when the real cost of building a home was the labor. [4] Today, between inflation and wage stagnation, it's the materials that really cost you.


Explanation: There are a total of four sentences here. We evaluate the purpose of each one. Sentence one talks about using a credit card to make purchases. Sentence two discusses the increased costs of construction materials over time. Sentence three repeats on the theme of sentence two and tells us that construction materials are much more expensive that they were in the past. The last sentence once again continues on the theme of the cost of materials. This would indicate to use that the first sentence should be removed. That is because it did not focus on the same theme as the other three.