If in Doubt, Cut it Out

One of the easiest ways to reduce your proofreading load is to tighten your copy.

As the classic book The Elements of Style states: “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences… .”

And this requires that “every word tell.”

Fortunately, one easy way to “make every word tell” is to substitute smaller words for larger words and phrases. For example:

Instead of	Use
Despite the fact that	Even
Enables you to	Lets you
Has to	Must
In reference to	About
In the event that	If
Look into	Consider
Few in number	Few
Past history	History
A majority of	Most
All of	All
At the present time	Now
Due to the fact that	Because
End result	Result

Got the picture? If a word doesn’t help, it hinders. So cut it out.

For more suggested replacements, visit Kim Blank’s Wordiness, Wordiness, Wordiness List.

Kim advises that you “edit your work like it was written by someone you don’t like.”

Good advice.