{"id":44,"date":"2022-07-13T16:54:03","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T20:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/communicating\/chapter\/eliminating-wordiness\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T18:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T23:50:09","slug":"chapter-14","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/communicating\/chapter\/chapter-14\/","title":{"raw":"Achieving Conciseness","rendered":"Achieving Conciseness"},"content":{"raw":"In many of your classes, you are probably used to trying to stretch out your writing to reach that 1,000-word goal for an essay. This is a habit you want to avoid<\/em> in professional communication because professional audiences\u2014employees, clients, supervisors, and others\u2014prefer writing that is clear and, most importantly, concise<\/strong>. For our purposes, [pb_glossary id=\"167\"]conciseness<\/strong>[\/pb_glossary] means using the fewest words possible to achieve the goal of communication.\r\n\r\nWhat is the goal of communication? It is to ensure that your reader understands your intended meaning. Just ask yourself, if you were given the choice between reading a 500 word article and a 250 word article that both communicate the same meaning, which one would you prefer to read?\r\n\r\nTo be clear, there is nothing grammatically wrong with all the examples we will cover below. However, having perfect grammar doesn't mean a message is particularly well-written. The issue here is a matter of style\u2014and style is perhaps the most important and most difficult skill professional writers need to master. Using the techniques listed below will keep readers focused on your message and help them interpret what you are saying more easily.\r\n\r\nSo, how do we make our writing more concise<\/strong>? Here are a few basic steps you can follow.\r\n

1. Mass-delete whatever doesn\u2019t belong<\/h2>\r\nThe first practical step towards trimming your document is a large-scale purge of whatever doesn\u2019t contribute to the purpose you set out to achieve. Such a purge is important because you don\u2019t want to waste time proof-editing anything that you\u2019re just going to delete anyway. However, this action is probably the most difficult one to take because it involves deleting large swaths of writing that may have taken some time and effort to compose.\r\n\r\nDon't be sentimental about your own writing, especially with professional documents. If the writing is better without it, cut it.\r\n\r\nA good rule is that, if the content could potentially sidetrack readers, whose understanding of the topic would be unaffected (at best) or overwhelmed (at worst) by it's inclusion, those sentences, paragraphs, and even whole sections simply must go. Highlight, delete, and\u00a0 move forward.\r\n\r\n(Save older versions of your work just in case you end up wanting to retrieve any of that later or use tracked changes technology to keep a record of what was deleted.)\r\n

2. Delete long lead-ins<\/h2>\r\nThe next way to be concise comes from deleting lead-ins. [pb_glossary id=\"168\"]Lead-ins[\/pb_glossary] <\/strong>are the groups of words that you wrote to gear up towards your main point. In ordinary speech, we use lead-ins<\/strong> as something like throat-clearing exercises. In writing, however, these are often useless (at best) because they state the obvious. At worst, lead-ins<\/strong> immediately upset the reader by signaling that the rest of the message will contain some time-wasting text.\r\n\r\nTake the following the examples:\r\n
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