Good writing is concise. George Orwell advised “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”
The classic manual of modern prose style, “The Elements of Style,” puts it this way:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
So how do you make sure that your emails, blog posts and that novel in progress are lean? In two steps.
Step 1: Write your first draft without worrying about brevity. The first draft is often as much about thinking through the piece as it is about producing polished prose. (The first draft of this post had 765 words; the final, 572.)
Step 2: Cut the fat. Go through the your first draft with your editor’s eye and look for ways to make your sentences and paragraphs clear, compelling and lean.
Here are seven tips to help you whip that flabby first draft into shape:
1. Change passive voice to active voice. In active voice, the subject acts on the object. In passive voice, the object is acted upon by the subject.
Example: “The mail carrier was bitten by the dog” changes to “The dog bit the mail carrier.”
2. Use short words instead of long ones.
Example. “Use” for “utilize,” “about” for “approximately,” etc. Look at those long words and ask yourself if there’s a shorter one that means the same thing.
3. Kill the do-nothing phrases.
If you’ve used expressions such as “the fact that,” “the reason why is,” “it is interesting that” and so forth, you can probably get rid of them.
4. Delete prepositions — of, by, for, into, etc.
Prepositions — those little words show relationships between other words — are often a sign of bloated language. You can’t kill all of them them all, but you can get rid of many. For instance, change “a lot of people” to “many people” or “he heads up a department” to “he heads a department.”
5. Eliminate redundant modifiers.
It’s surprising how many phrases littering our speech are redundant. Some examples:
Core essence becomes essence
Personal friend becomes friend
Violent assault becomes assault
Glare angrily becomes glare
12 noon becomes noon
Deliberately target becomes target
6. Change wordy phrases to simple verbs.
Are you using more words than you need to express simple ideas? Change “make a recommendation” to “recommend”, “give a donation” to “donate,” “work to build” to “build,” and so forth.
7. Get rid of intensifying words.
Usually when you see words such as very, extremely, intensely, and the like, they’re unnecessary. Just get rid of them.
Is there such a thing as writing too tightly?
Yes, but it’s a rare problem. Conciseness isn’t the most important virtue in writing; clarity is more important. If you must choose between the two, choose clarity. Further, a variety of sentence lengths and word choices create rhythm and variety, which please readers. So, yeah, not every sentence has to be stripped down to its bare bones. But lean copy almost always packs more punch.
Got more tips for lean copy? Please share them in the comments.
