Remember that wordiness is the enemy of clear, energetic writing. Wordiness makes your reader want to stop reading because of impatience, boredom, or confusion. It also tends to confuse you as well: when you have lost your way in an assignment, you will often find that cutting the excess verbiage will allow you to see what you are really saying, and seeing that will give you an idea how to continue. Here are some tips for making your writing more concise:

Vague writing is almost always wordy. By sharpening details, you will tend to eliminate wordiness automatically. Look how, in this example, the author fills up space with vague adjectives (excellent, famous, brilliant, wonderful, amazing, memorable, great) without ever explaining why they apply, and lists titles and characters without saying anything about them. One really knows nothing more about the subject after reading than one did before:

Example: The Great Gatsby is an excellent novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote The Great Gatsby and other famous novels such as Tender is the Night and The Last Tycoon, was a brilliant author. He created some wonderful characters and amazing descriptions that still remain popular today. Among these characters are Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Nick Carraway, George Wilson, Myrtle Wilson, and of course Jay Gatsby himself. These memorable characters help make The Great Gatsby a great achievement in American literature.

Revised: The success of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby depends chiefly on its memorable characters, none of whom is wholly admirable. Tom Buchanan is racist, violent, and perversely sentimental. Daisy, despite her status as Gatsby’s ideal woman, is emotionally shallow and self-absorbed. Nick Carraway claims to be honest early in the novel, but by the end is swearing not to lie to himself any more. Compared with these flawed characters, Gatsby himself — despite his criminal activities and quixotic love for a woman he barely knows — becomes not just sympathetic but admirable because of his determination to re-create himself according to his ideals.

In the revised version, the adjectives are much more specific. We can see how the paper might develop each of these sentences into whole paragraphs or more as the paper continues. Also, irrelevant details (the names of Fitzgerald’s other novels, characters that the paper will not bother to examine, the “amazing descriptions” that have nothing to do with the paper’s real topic) have been cut out. Now this paragraph actually says something.

Ironically, this actually helps you produce more content. Thus, eliminating wordiness helps you create more length, because (as I always say) length is created by depth, not breadth.

These are the three most common verbs in the English language; you need them, but you should use them (and all their different forms) as little as possible. Not only do these verbs tend to make for wordy sentences, they barely qualify as actions, so over-using them makes your writing dull. Seek out more specific, energetic verbs:

Example: Many of drama’s central concepts were originally Aristotle’s ideas and are in the Poetics.

Revised: Many of drama’s central concepts originated in Aristotle’s Poetics.

Example: I was intending to do my studying for my history exam before I had to go to my job, but I had no time.

Revised: I meant to study for my history exam before my shift at TGIFriday’s started, but time ran out.

You might think that using adverbial intensifiers — words such as extremely, considerably, rather, quite, and very, among many others — makes the words that come after them stronger. Paradoxically, however, it actually makes them weaker by signaling your reader that you aren’t using the right word and so have to somehow improve it with an intensifier. That’s like slapping a fresh coat of paint on a house with a rotten frame. Take the time to find the best word for your meaning without needing to modify it. In doing so, you will generally trade in a general adjective for a more specific one. Note: you must be careful that the more specific adjective makes sense in the context of the sentence. Do not use a thesaurus blindly; just because two words have related meanings does not mean they are interchangeable:

Example: Sam was extremely happy when Ellen walked in because that meant she had decided not to go abroad for the summer.

Revised: Sam was ecstatic when Ellen walked in because that meant she had decided not to go abroad for the summer.

Sometimes, you can replace a boring combination of verb, adverbial intensifier, and adjective with a more descriptive verb or verb phrase and the result will seem more energetic, even if the new phrase requires more words.

Example: For the students gazing out at the warm, sunny, freshly painted playground, the hours went by very slowly.

Revised: For the students gazing out at the warm, sunny, freshly painted playground, the hours crawled at a glacial pace.

Note: Of all the intensifiers, very and really are the most commonly overused. Students can fall into a pattern of using them almost constantly. I suggest you try writing without them for a while and see what happens. In particular, save really for when you mean “in reality” and avoid using it as an adverbial intensifier.

In a normal sentence (active voice), a subject performs an action. In a passive voice sentence, the subject does nothing; something is done to it instead. The passive voice can be useful sometimes, such as when you do not know who performed a certain action. Saying “My car was stolen” is more natural than saying “Someone stole my car” because the latter sentence puts the emphasis on information you do not have. Also, presumably you care more about your car than the person who stole it, so it makes sense to start with My car.

Also, some disciplines use passive voice more often than others. Researchers will often use a construction such as “Respondents were asked” rather than “We asked the respondents,” or “One third of the patients in the study were given a placebo” rather than “We administered a placebo to one third of the patients. However, in most cases, active voice sentences are preferable.

Example: The cat was trained by Joanne to ring the doorbell if she wanted to come in.

Revised: Joanne trained her cat to ring the doorbell if she wanted to come in.

People who use the passive voice too often can sound weaselly, such as when the politician says, “Mistakes were made.” (Who made them is unimportant, apparently.) Yet most of us would respect him more if he simply said, “I made a mistake.” Students who phrase important points in the passive voice sound unsure of their own arguments.  Solve this problem by re-writing the sentence in the active voice:

Example: Both Henry James’s depiction of Lavinia Penniman and Ernest Hemingway’s depiction of Robert Cohn can be considered parodies of Romanticism.

Revised: I consider both Henry James’s depiction of Lavinia Penniman and Ernest Hemingway’s depiction of Robert Cohn parodies of Romanticism.

Revised further: Henry James’s depiction of Lavinia Penniman and Ernest Hemingway’s depiction of Robert Cohn both parody Romanticism. (No real reason to use the first person here.)

Sentences beginning with “There is” or “There are” are cases of inverted syntax. There isn’t the subject, after all. When you say “There is the restaurant” the subject is restaurant; in effect, you are saying, “The restaurant is there,” and when you look at it that way, you see how boring a sentence it is. It is the verbal equivalent of pointing. Of course, if you are looking for a particular restaurant and cannot find it, “There is the restaurant” might be the sentence you would most like to hear, but in academic work, merely pointing at something is a lost opportunity.

Usually, you can easily re-write a “There” sentence or clause to make it more concise, either by re-arranging the words or by replacing the “to be” verb with a more interesting one.

Example: There are many things Calvino describes that did not exist during Marco Polo and Kubla’s era.

Revised: Calvino describes many things that did not exist during Marco Polo and Kubla Khan’s era.

Example: I hope there will not be many more events for which I have to wear a tuxedo.

Revised: I hope I will seldom attend events that require me to wear a tuxedo.

This is one way to needlessly extend a sentence. It accomplishes nothing except complicating your syntax.

Example: In the scene in which Mrs Sloane attempts to invite Gatsby to dinner only to be overruled by her husband, it shows how Gatsby’s wealth and charisma are not enough to overcome the resistance of the upper class.

Revised:  The scene in which Mrs Sloane attempts to invite Gatsby to dinner only to be overruled by her husband shows how Gatsby’s wealth and charisma are not enough to overcome the resistance of the upper class.

Literally, the original sentence does not quite make sense, because the antecedent for it is the scene, not something in the scene. As you can see, though, the good news here is that often all that is required to fix the problem is to cut the preposition, the pronoun, and the comma (if one is there). But even when the sentence is grammatically fine, you will be better off simplifying the syntax.

The it is [fill in the blank] that construction in which the blank is an adjective is a rhetorical flourish that works much better in speech than on the page. Change the construction to an adverb or cut it entirely:

Example: It is sad that her father died before he had a chance to see her on stage.

Revised: Sadly, her father died before he had a chance to see her on stage.

Example: It is certain that smoking cigarettes regularly increases one’s chances of developing emphysema and numerous types of cancer.

Revised: Smoking cigarettes regularly increases one’s chances of developing emphysema and numerous types of cancer.

This is true regardless of tense (it was . . . that, it had been . . . that, and so on) also applies to it is . . . how and when that is assumed, for example, it is probable she will win.

Note that the it is [fill in the blank] construction can sometimes be more acceptable when the blank is a noun or noun-phrase than when it is an adjective:

Example: The detective had quickly settled on Dr. Prendergast as the likely killer and the dental floss as the means by which the strychnine was adminstered; it was the motive that eluded him.

This could be revised to remove the it is [fill in the blank] construction:

Revised: The detective had quickly settled on Dr. Prendergast as the likely killer and the dental floss as the means by which the strychnine was administered, but the motive eluded him.

However, this change alters the emphasis somewhat. Still, the times you need this effect will be rare, and even then using it too frequently eliminates any benefit.

A completely unnecessary word or phrase is redundant. Sometimes a word is unnecessary because it is an adjective, adverb, or phrase whose meaning is already part of the word being modified. For example, we do not need to be told that a baby is young or little, a battle is violent or fierce, a diamond-encrusted watch is expensive, or corpses are dead. Nor do we need to read that someone raced quickly or yelled loudly or inched his way through the minefield carefully, or that someone has chewed his food slowly with his teeth. You can normally fix this problem simply by cutting.

Example: George and Martha shout at each other angrily at many points throughout the whole play, but say their most vicious phrases without raising their voices in volume.

Revised: George and Martha often shout at each other, but say their most vicious phrases without raising their voices.

Using two words instead of one does not make your writing more precise if their meanings are similar. You may even annoy your reader, who must then pause and figure out why the difference between the words is important enough that you need both. Instead of using two or three words that mean sort of what you intended, find more specific modifiers. You may find you then have room for another modifier that actually offers an additional piece of information.

Example: Hamlet’s offering forgiveness to Laertes is a kind, generous, and beneficent act.

Revised: Hamlet’s offering forgiveness to Laertes is a generous act.

Or: For Hamlet to forgive Laertes is a generous and kingly act. (These two adjectives are sufficiently distinct.)

Example: The dinosaur skeleton lay before us: big, huge, and immense.

Revised: The dinosaur skeleton lay before us: huge and unimaginably ancient.

Example: Jim and Danny had been good friends and comrades since they were children.

Revised: Jim and Danny had been good friends since childhood.  

A series of short sentences with the same subjects can usually be combined:

Example: Jason was proud of his car. He always took care of it. He loved washing it. He carefully washed the outside every week and then he dried the paint with a chamois. He would wax it himself, too. He always put Armor-All on the dashboard and door panels.

Revised: Jason was proud of his car and always took care if it, every week carefully washing it and chamoising it dry, then waxing it, and even putting Armor-All on the dashboard and door panels.

Note that it is possible that you might want to use the first option in some rare circumstances. All of those short sentences do slow your readers down, and thus emphasize the meticulous care that Jason gave his car. A sophisticated writer may well make a conscious decision to do that. But in the vast majority of cases, combining the sentences will avoid frustrating your reader.

You may write a phrase beginning with that, which, or who because it occurs to you separately from the main idea of the sentence. In revision, however, the phrase will often easily fit into the sentence’s main clause.

Example: The rose bush, which had been growing in our back yard for years, never looked more beautiful.

Revised: The old rose bush in our back yard never looked more beautiful.

Example: Abby had never been close to her brother, who was a successful doctor in Manhattan.

Revised: Abby and her brother, a successful Manhattan doctor, had never been close.

Some words and phrases act only to make you sound unsure of your point, or as if you are trying to leave yourself an escape hatch: if someone argues with you, the phrasing allows you to pretend you did not really mean what you said. Chief among these is seem, a word that implies a difference between appearance and reality. If someone asks you whether you know Tim, and you say, “He seems nice,” one almost expects you to add “but I heard he may have drowned a puppy last week” a moment later. Rather than persuading your reader, in other words, seem makes him or her suspicious.

Example: Shelley’s depiction of Keats in the introduction he appended to “Adonaïs” seems to be more a case of projection than an accurate character sketch.

Revised: Shelley’s depiction of Keats in the introduction he appended to “Adonaïs” is more a case of projection than an accurate character sketch.

Revised further: Shelley’s depiction of Keats in the introduction he appended to “Adonaïs” — far from being an accurate character sketch — is pure projection.

This last version puts the most stress on the word projection, which is the key concept in this sentence.

Seem is appropriate when you are actually trying to stress the difference between appearance and reality:

Example: Heller’s rejection of chronological structure in Catch-22 is necessary so that Yossarian seem either cowardly or insane at first: the reader does not have any clue how much provocation he has endured before the first chapter begins.

The word almost can cause a similar problem, unless you are using it in a phrase like he served almost nine years on Devil’s Island before he was pardoned. That is fine, but weak writers often use it merely to weaken an analogy indicated by like or as if:

Example: The accused demonstrated so many of the symptoms of melancholy, it is almost as if he was copying Hamlet.

Revised: The accused demonstrated so many of the symptoms of melancholy, one would think he was copying Hamlet.

While seem and almost can occasionally serve a useful purpose, the same is not true of phrases such as in a way, kind of, sort of, a little, a bit, and more or less. These phrases weaken whatever point you are trying to make. They usually indicate some uncertainty on your part; they make you sound as if you have not thought through your point enough to be comfortable with it, and if you are not comfortable with it, your reader will not be either. If your point is otherwise persuasive, these phrases will make your reader doubt it; if your reader already is skeptical of your point, these phrases will only reinforce the skepticism.

Of course, good arguments are nuanced and often require that you acknowledge counter-arguments and exceptions. But the way to do that is by being clear and specific, not to turn make your own point sound spineless.

Progressive tenses — because they are formed from a combination of a helping verb and a participle — always require one more word than simple tenses, and the extra word is necessarily a form of to be. In most cases, simple tenses are (as the word suggests) simpler and more direct:

Example: Geraldine is putting Christabel in the position of a groom by feigning illness so that Christabel will carry her over the threshold, which, as in a traditional vampire story, she cannot cross on her own.

Revised: Geraldine puts Christabel in the position of a groom by feigning illness so that Christabel will carry her over the threshold, which, as in a traditional vampire story, she cannot cross on her own.

Save the progressive tense for when you are stressing simultaneity, meaning that one thing happens while another is happening:

Example: During the time Dr. Watson believed Holmes was dead after his final clash with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, Holmes was actually taking advantage of his presumed death in order to destroy the rest of Moriarty’s criminal organization.

The same rules apply to the past and future forms of the progressive tense as well.

Too many long sentences in a row — whether compound, complex, or compound-complex — are wearying. Never underestimate the value of simple sentences; they give your readers a welcome break and make your writing more energetic.

Example: Because of its maneuverability and firepower, the Fokker DRI triplane was one of the most feared planes of World War I. In a skilled pilot’s hands, a Fokker on the prowl became a fearsome weapon. A German pilot in a Fokker could out-climb and out-turn all the French and British planes he faced, and with two machine guns out-shoot them as well. But the plane’s weakness was its comparatively poor straight-line speed and diving ability, which meant that it could not turn and run if the battle went badly or Allied reinforcements arrived.

Revised: Because of its maneuverability and firepower, the Fokker DRI triplane was one of the most feared planes of World War I. In a skilled pilot’s hands, a Fokker on the prowl became a fearsome weapon. A German pilot in a Fokker, could out-climb and out-turn all the French and British planes he faced, and with two machine guns out-shoot them as well. But the plane had a weakness. Its comparatively poor straight-line speed and diving ability meant that it could not turn and run if the battle went badly or Allied reinforcements arrived.

Breaking the last sentence into two, one of which is only six words, gives the reader a break and emphasizes the point that the plane had a weakness.

English words that have their roots in Latin typically sound more elegant and sophisticated than those that have their roots in Germanic languages. People speaking Latin and Romance languages sound cultured; people speaking German sound as if they have bronchitis and are trying to cough something up. However, those short, harsh, Germanic words are effective at cutting quickly to the point. Use them.

Example: By a determined application of effort and careful husbandry of my finances, I hoped to accumulate sufficient capital to purchase a new vehicle before the autumn semester began.

Revised: By working hard and watching every dollar, I hoped to save the money for a new car before the fall semester.

Certain words and phrases are the written equivalent of the “uhhhh” some people use to fill the silences between their words: they add neither substance nor style. They also often undercut the rest of the sentence. Cut them ruthlessly. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is a start:

Other phrases are always wordy. Generally, these phrases tend to originate in specialized applications such as legal contracts; every profession develops its own jargon. Whence they derive matters less than that you cut them.