Conciseness
Conciseness
The quality of being short and clear, and expressing what needs to be said without unnecessary words.1
Conciseness means removing unnecessary words to improve clarity, not using the fewest words.
Conciseness takes much time to develop, but many methods exist to improve. Readers and listeners want you to get to the point quickly, and improving conciseness will make you a clear and engaging communicator.
Start your journey to conciseness by adding the following items to your process. These will help you to reduce your wordiness.
What words are unnecessary?
All words should have value for the reader. Eliminate those that aren't.
Adverbs and more concise terms
Adverbs like very, really, totally are common. See the bold adverbs below, and see how the adverbs and the words after them can be made concise through more precise language.
- He was very happy. He was ecstatic.
- He was really, really tired. He was exhausted.
Be precise in your words. Think before you write. Think as you write. Think clearly to write clearly.
Yes, only a couple words have been removed. However, when these extra words happen in many sentences, you have a lot of "fluff" which needs cleaning up.
Find adverbs in writing
Use Hemingway to find adverbs easily, and remove them if you can find more concise language.
Remove vague sentence subjects
Communication works best when you get to the point, quickly.
When sentences start with "It is" and "There are" - known as weak expletives or weak sentence starters - the subject of the sentence is not clear because it is hidden further in the sentence. Look at the two sentences below. The subject is in bold.
It is essential that the team has weekly meetings.
There are six language elements to JavaScript.
Concise writing puts the subject in its clearest position, at the beginning. When the subject starts a sentence, the words that follow become more concise, and clear, too.
The team must have weekly meetings
JavaScript contains six language elements. (Here the focus is on JavaScript)
Six language elements are in JavaScript. (Here the focus is on the language elements)
As a writer, decide what the focus of the sentence is. Start with that.
Find weak sentence starters
Use Ctrl-F on your keyboard and search for "there is", "there are", and "it is". Go to each example and edit to add a stronger subject.
Remove redundant items
When your writing contains pairs of words that have a similar meaning, you can often remove one, ad the sentence meaning stays the same. Look at this sentence:
- Each and every time I come to class, I forget to bring my coffee.
The redundant pair is each and every. Use one of the words only. Look now:
- Every time I come to class, I forget to bring my coffee.
Example redundancies
- (advance) planning
- (12) midnight
- cold (temperature)
- (reason is) because
- cheap (price)
- anticipate (in advance)
Use strong verbs instead of weak verb + noun
Writing can be made concise through use of stronger verbs. Take a look at this sentence:
- Sam made a decision to scrap the final exam.
The sentence can be made more concise if we recognize a weak verb with noun, such as make a decision, and use a stronger verb. In this case, use the noun decision and turn it into the verb decide. Now look at the concise sentence:
- Sam decided to scrap the final.
Look for sentences where weaker verbs can be made into stronger ones. Here are a couple examples:
- Less concise: They conducted an investigation into conciseness.
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More concise: The investigated conciseness.
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Less concise: They made an agreement to cancel the meeting.
- More concise: They agreed to cancel the meeting.
- Less concise: They are a star of the movie.
- More concise: They star in the movie.
Replace phrases with words
Lots of phrases can be made more concise with a single word. Look at the examples below.
Simplified phrases
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The reason for = because
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Due to the fact that = due to or because
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In the event that = if
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It is necessary that = must
Remember, changing a single sentence will not affect conciseness in a message. Look for all the ways you can help the reader by making every word count.