Can I use etc in an essay?
Look at the recent IELTS Writing Task 2 below:
Nowadays more and more museums and art galleries around the world are putting their materials and contents online.
Do you think this is a positive or negative development?
In the Members Academy Writing session, we looked at the arguments against putting museum and art exhibits online.
Here's an opponent of digitization - can you improve the sentence?
"People might not be able to appreciate the colours, the scale etc".
In Academic Writing, "etc" (from the full latin word 'et cetera' meaning 'and similar other things') is considered to be 'lazy'.
The IELTS examiner expects you to provide all the details and to be specific - so you shouldn't expect the reader to fill in all the details for you.
Here are some ways of avoiding 'etc':
"People might not be able to appreciate details such as the colours and the scale".
"People might not be able to appreciate details the colours and the scale, for example".
It is fine to give just 2 examples, and there's no need to use 'etc' or 'and so on'.
Members Academy link - get the model essay and webinar replay in 'All webinars'.
