Redundancy and wordiness (concision) — ACT practice questions

Each winter, a small team of volunteers gather at Hollow Ridge Cave to keep a record of the air inside. The cave is a hibernation site for several bat species, and even slight shifts in temperature or humidity can predict the animals’ rest. They come from nearby towns, carrying notebooks, a hygrometer, and a map. Their work is quiet, methodical, and deliberately slow.

At the entrance they pause to let their eyes adjust, then follow a narrow passage into a hall of hanging draperies, thin soda straws, and still pools. Along a route marked with numbered tags, they stop at each station, read the instruments, and enter the figures in a log. After a flood, the entrance trail was rebuilt, and a steel gate was fitted to the cave’s mouth.

One January, a volunteer at Station 7 was unexpectedly surprised and startled¹ by a humidity reading that did not match the week before. Later, the team learned that a cold snap outside does not always mean a matching drop within; the cave’s air can lag, hold, or even reverse. Clusters of bats, they noted add moisture to the air around a station. A closed gate, an open crack, and a cluster of bats can each change a station’s numbers.

The project now delivers its logs to a regional wildlife office. The office times gate repairs so hibernating bats are not disturbed. Local schools schedule spring field trips once the bats have left. The volunteers first initially began² the surveys after a researcher asked whether the cave’s winter air was stable enough for a nursery colony.

In late autumn they walk the stations in reverse, checking that each numbered station can be matched to the same station in earlier logs. The office files dated handwritten copies of each season’s log, alongside later typed summaries. A new volunteer learns to wait for the hygrometer’s needle to settle. By March the bats begin to stir, and the team packs the instruments away until the annual yearly repeating³ return of cold. Comparing more than a decade of winter readings, gate repairs are timed by the wildlife office so that hibernating bats are not disturbed.