Concise Writing Links

Sites that focus on eliminating extra words from your writing

Calvary's Concise Writing Links is an annotated directory of Web sites that give advice on cutting the fat from your writing – so your readers can easily chew, digest and be nourished by your top-choice words.

"Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."

Nearly a century ago, renowned British lexicographer H.W. Fowler wrote those words to introduce the first chapter of The King's English. In that chapter on vocabulary, Fowler translated his principle into these practical rules:

• Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
• Prefer the concrete word to the abstract.
• Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
• Prefer the short word to the long.
• Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

Ten years later, in the first edition of The Elements of Style, American English professor William Strunk Jr. urged his students at Cornell University to "Omit needless words":

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Three-quarters of a century later, the American Heritage Book of English Usage continued to exhort writers to reduce wordiness:

Most of us are busy and impatient people. We hate to wait. Using too many words is like asking people to stand in line until you get around to the point. It is irritating, which hardly helps when you are trying to win someone's goodwill or show that you know what you're talking about. What is worse, using too many words often makes it difficult to understand what is being said. It forces a reader to work hard to figure out what is going on, and in many cases the reader may simply decide it is not worth the effort. Another side effect of verbosity is the tendency to sound overblown, pompous, and evasive. What better way to turn off a reader?

Through decades and generations, many other guides, handbooks, manuals, textbooks and, recently, Web pages have offered writing advice. Without a doubt, most coax novice and experienced writers to increase reader understanding with clear and concise words, sentences and paragraphs.

That sage advice is widespread, perhaps even universal. It crosses all fields from journalism to law, from business writing to technical writing, from corporate communication to public information, from nonfiction to even fiction.

• A to Z of alternative words – Plain English Campaign, a privately owned business based in the United Kingdom. This guide gives hundreds of plain English alternatives to the pompous words and phrases that litter official writing.

• Buried Under Words – Greg Nesty, School of Business and Economics, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. Topics: passive voice; nouniness (nominalizations); obsolete, pompous and overly formal phrases; and tautologies.

• Conciseness: Methods of Eliminating Wordiness – Online Writing Lab, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Methods for eliminating wordiness that include changing phrases into words, avoiding overuse of noun forms of verbs and omitting repetitive wording.

• Concise Writing – Betty Hart, Ph.D., University of Southern Indiana, Evansville. Nine suggestions, with examples, for cutting unnecessary words.

• Concision from The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing – Michael Harvey, professor, Department of Business Management, Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland. Discusses the lure of wordiness and shows ways to eliminate excess words, weak adverbs, and empty words and phrases.

• Curing Wordiness – Transaction Net, San Francisco, California. Topics include attacking wordiness at its source, holistic cures for wordiness and concrete antiwordiness strategies.

• Deadwood Phrases – "Deadwood phrases are found in all types of writing. In technical writing they are to be avoided at all costs as documentation needs to be crisp, concise and accurate. "

• Eliminating Wordiness – Undergraduate Writing Center, University of Texas at Austin. This PDF file discusses the causes of wordiness and how to avoid it.

• How to Make Sentences Clear and Concise – Writer's Web, University of Richmond, Virginia. Describes the "Paramedic Method" for making your writing clearer and more concise, as developed by Richard Lanham, English professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

• How to Write Clear, Concise, and Direct Sentences – Grammar Handbook, Writing Center, University of Wisconsin at Madison. Advice describes using active verbs and avoiding wordy phrases and verbs, prepositional phrases, vague and inflated nouns, and noun phrases.

• More Hints for Concise Writing – Lorena Russell, Ph.D., Department of English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Hints include simplifying verb phrases and relative clauses, avoiding expletives and over-qualifying, using infinitives and omitting redundancies.

• Nine Easy Steps to Writing Longer Sentences – Kathy McGinty at Plain Language Action Network. The author shows how easily you can increase the verbiage in this ludicrously short and simple sentence: More night jobs would keep youths off the streets.

• Plague Words and Phrases – Charles Darling, professor of English/humanities, Capital Community-Technical College, Hartford, Connecticut. Avoid problems created by words and phrases listed here.

• Principles of Clear Writing – U.S. Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration. Discussion of 22 principles that include using active verbs, present tense, simple words and short sentences, and omitting needless words, negative phrases and redundancies.

• Reducing Wordiness: Occam's Razor Still Applies – John T. Harwood, director, Education Technology Services, Pennsylvania State University. Lists ways to reduce wordiness.

• Removing Word Clutter – Jennifer Jordan-Henley, Online Writing Lab, Roane State Community College, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This list of clutter words, mostly from business and technical writing, includes "many redundancies, clichés, and bureaucratic phrases so ingrained in our speech and writing that most writers must concentrate just to notice them."

• Revising to Eliminate Wordiness – Online Writing Manual, written by Jeff Jeske and maintained by Laura Parker, Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina. Lists more than 10 ways to cut wordiness, including converting prepositional phrases to possessive nouns and compressing adverb phrases to participle phrases.

• Strategies for Reducing Wordiness – Judith Kilborn, The Write Place, St. Cloud State University, Minnesota. Describes ways to revise patterns of wordiness, such as filler phrases, passive verbs, weak verbs and prepositional phrases.

• Tips for Reducing Wordiness – Language and Academic Skills Unit, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia. Eleven tips that include reducing the number of "is" sentences, eliminating words that say the same thing and avoiding stating the obvious.

• Wordiness: Danger Signals and Ways to React – Margaret Procter, Ph.D., coordinator, Writing Support, University of Toronto, Canada. Lists eight common patterns of wordiness and sensible things to do about them.

• Words that should be banned for life – Thomas L. Mangan, copy editor, San Jose [California] Mercury News. "This page is devoted to those expressions so hackneyed and insufferable that they should be forever banned from the nation's news reports."

• Writing Concise Sentences – Charles Darling, professor of English/humanities, Capital Community-Technical College, Hartford, Connecticut. "Whether it's a two-word quip or a 200-word bear, a sentence must be a lean, thinking machine. Here are some notes toward efficiency and conciseness in writing."

• Writing Tips – from Plain Language at Work, Australia Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs and the Australian National Training Authority. Tips include using everyday language, short sentences and brief paragraphs.

Plain Language

Plain language writing is a technique of organizing information in ways that make sense to the reader. It uses straightforward, concrete, familiar words.

Plain language matches the needs of the reader with your needs as a writer, leading to effective, efficient communication. It is effective because readers can understand your message. It is efficient because readers can understand your message the first time they read it.

The international plain language movement is an effort of businesses, organizations, agencies and individuals dedicated to presenting information so it makes sense to most people.

According to proponents, plain language is communication designed to meet the needs of the intended audience, so people can understand information that is important to their lives.

• Answering the Critics of Plain Language--by Professor Joseph Kimble of the Thomas Cooley Law School of Lansing, Michigan. 
  From Volume 5 of The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing (1994-1995).

• Brushing Up on Fundamentals--Peter Butt, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Australia
  Butt's conference presentation describes the five global fundamentals of plain language and 10 particular fundamentals.

• Cheryl Stephens on Plain Language--Plain language trainer, coach, consultant, writer and editor, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  An excellent series of articles, including "Building Plain Language from the Ground Up," "An Introduction to Plain Language" and "Design Issues."

• David Elliott on Plain Language--David C. Elliott, Legislative Drafting Services, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
  Several articles on legislating plain language, making legal documents readable, writing collective agreements in plain language and writing in plain language. Not just for lawyers.

• Drafting Legal Documents--U.S. Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration
  Besides guidelines for legal document structure, includes advice about ambiguity, clear writing, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, cross references and expressions to avoid.

• From plain English to global English--Rachel McAlpine, writer, trainer and Web content consultant, Wellington, New Zealand
  McAlpine takes plain English techniques another step--to making documents easy to read and understand worldwide for people who use English as a foreign language.

• How to write clearly--From the Fight the Fog campaign of the Translation Service for the European Commission
  "Whether your job is drafting or translating, here are some hints--not rules--that will help you to write clearly and make sure your message ends up in your readers' brains, not in their bins."

• How to Write Well--Chris Ziska, Ziska Designs, London
  A nine-part guide to learning how to write effectively using plain language and plain English

• Plain English at Work--produced for Australia's Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs and the Australian National Training Authority.
  Excellent guide for helping organizations develop plain English documents.

• Plain English from Plain English Campaign: Free Guides–Plain English Campaign is a privately owned business based in the United Kingdom.
  Ten free guides as Web pages and PDF files, including

  A to Z of alternative words,
  How to write letters in plain English,
  Plain English tips for clear websites and
  How to write reports in plain English.

• Plain Language: How to Communicate Better in the Information Age--ComPro Inc., a private communications firm.
  Includes frequently asked questions and issues to ponder from Plain Language & the Document Revolution, 1998, by Carol M. Baldwin.

• Plain Language: What is it?--U.S. Small Business Administration
  Defines plain language and gives 13 tips on how to write plainly.

• PlainTrain: Plain Language Online Training--adapted from publications of the National Literacy Secretariat--Human Resources Development Canada.
  Eight topic sections on introducing plain language, your reader and your purpose, organizing ideas, using appropriate words, clear and simple sentences, clear and effective paragraphs, design and testing.

• PlainTrain: Plain Language Online Training--Digest
  A summary of the entire PlainTrain program that's easier to print and view offline.

• StyleWriter: The Plain English Editor – Editor Software, United Kingdom
  You can this downloadable software. Running from within leading word processors, it searches for complex words, jargon, abstract words, wordy phrases, hidden verbs, passive verbs, clichés, long sentences and other writing faults. It then offers advice on editing each sentence. Free demo download; full version costs US$160.

• Word Dog Plain English Editor – Plain English Technologies, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
  Downloadable WordDog application sniffs out wordy phrases and redundancies, then suggests clear, crisp words. Free demo download; full version costs $20-25.

• Writing Styleguide and Dictionary of Plain English (PDF, 72KB) – Duncan Kent & Associates Ltd., a technical communication company in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  Alphabetical list of difficult words and phrases, word-wasting idioms, compound prepositions, formal phrases, and gender-specific words and phrases – with alternatives.

• Writing User-Friendly Documents – link to Word document produced by the U.S. Plain Language Action & Information Network.

Concise Writing Style

"Contrary to what some people seem to believe, simple writing is not the product of simple minds. A simple, unpretentious style has both grace and power. By not calling attention to itself, it allows the reader to focus on the message." – Richard Lederer and Richards Dowis, Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay, 1999. More Words of Wisdom If you want to make your writing easier to read and understand, use Garbl's Concise Writing Guide. This free guide provides alternatives to overstated, pompous words; wordy, bureaucratic phrases; and verbose, sometimes amusing redundant phrases:

• Shorter, simpler words
• Wordy phrase replacements
• Redundant phrase replacements.

Welcome to everyone who opposes the corrupt goals and actions of political extremists George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. We must speak out strongly – and write clearly – about their foreign-policy failures and trickle-down economics that make the rich even richer. This lying, incompetent president and his dishonest, self-righteous vice president have weakened the United States.

Words of Wisdom

Apocrypha: "Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in a few words.'"

Christopher Buckley: "The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'"

Truman Capote: "I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."

Rachel Carson: "[Writing is] largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible."

Winston Churchill: "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all."

Cicero: "When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium."

Leonardo da Vinci: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Albert Einstein: "If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well."

Albert Einstein: "Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in language comprehensible to everyone."

Albert Einstein: "Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction."

George Eliot: "The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words."

Wilson Follett: "Whenever we can make 25 words do the work of 50, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish."

H.W. Fowler: "Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."

Anatole France: "The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them."

Anatole France: "The best sentence? The shortest."

Learned Hand: "The language of law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it."

Robert Heinlein: "The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat."

Hippocrates: "The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words."

Thomas Jefferson: "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

Samuel Johnson: "Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters."

Samuel Johnson: "A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit."

Joseph Joubert: "Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear."

James J. Kilpatrick: "Use familiar words – words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away."

C.S. Lewis: "Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

John Locke: "Vague forms of speech have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard words mistaken for deep learning, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but a hindrance to true knowledge."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Many a poem is marred by a superfluous word."

W. Somerset Maugham: "The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut."

Charles Mingus: "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

George Orwell: "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

Blaise Pascal: "The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter."

William Penn: "Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood."

Alexander Pope: "Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found."

Beatrix Potter: "The shorter and the plainer the better."

Will Rogers: "I love words but I don't like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand you. Old words is like old friends, you know 'em the minute you see 'em."

William Safire: "It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do."

William Shakespeare: "Men of few words are the best men."

William Strunk: "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

Mark Twain: "I never write metropolis for seven cents when I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman when I can get the same money for cop."

Mark Twain: "As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out."

Mark Twain: "Anybody can have ideas – the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."

E.B. White: "Use the smallest word that does the job."

William Butler Yeats: "Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."

William Zinsser: "Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there."

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