Has anyone ever told you that your writing tends to fall on the wordy side? If you’ve been accused of excessive wordiness, you may want to consider a few strategies to help leave your writing more concise, apart from using a working grammar software.
Give Yourself A Breather. Don’t revise your paper as soon as you edit it. Always spend a few minutes a way from your draft before returning to revise it. Ideally, you shouldn’t edit until the next day. If you’re pressed for time, though, a quick coffee break or a couple of smokes will do.
Take Notes When You Edit. Taking notes will help you keep a tab on what patterns of wordiness you end up regularly committing. That way, you can watch out for them during your future writing endeavors.
Pay Particular Attention To Difficult Paragraphs. If there are specific sections of your writing that you struggled on, pay particular attention to them during the editing phase. More than likely, these areas will contain the worst offenses when it comes to wordiness.
Replace Passive Verbs. You’ve heard this advice a thousand times before. That’s because passive verbs tend to lead to wordy sentences. Update them to their active forms and immediately cut the text down to size.
Prepositional Phrases. Those relationship words like “of,” “from” and “after” should be replaced with one-word modifiers. You’ll be amazed at how much wordiness you can shave off from eliminating these alone. You’ll likely end up having to rewrite offending sentences, though.
Watch Out For Specific Words. Check for specific filler words such as “which,” “that,” “should,” “would,” and “could.” Eliminate them whenever you can.
Tags: concise writing, tight writing, wordiness
