Writing Concisely Blue Pencils the Task
This article helps you identify wordiness in your sentences, paragraphs, and essays and offers strategies for writing concisely. Identifying and addressing wordiness in sentences If you are a student, pay close attention to your instructors’ comments on your essays. Have they written things like “wordy,” “passive voice,” “filler” or “irrelevant”? By learning to write concisely, you will be able to fill your papers with more substantive information. Getting to the point promptly can help you become a clearer thinker and a more engaging writer. Outside of school, writing concisely can help you create more effective business letters, email messages, memos, and other documents. Busy readers appreciate getting the information they need quickly and easily. Here are some strategies to help you identify wordiness and decide whether, and how, to revise it. At times, you may choose to keep a sentence just as it is, even though there are more concise ways to express your idea: you...