English Grammar for the Utterly Confused - Laurie Rozakis 2003

Less Is More: Be Concise
Chapter 13 Diction and Conciseness
Part 5 Struttin Your Stuff with Style

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White is probably the most famous writing book of our time. This slender little volume contains this advice:

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. (MacMillan, NY, 1959, p. 17)

You can’t go wrong with this advice because an effective writing style shows an economy of language. When you omit needless words, you omit redundancy—the unnecessary repeti­tion of words and ideas. Wordy writing forces your readers to clear away unnecessary words and phrases before they can understand your message.

Here are 10 redundant phrases and their concise revisions:

I can’t resist hammering the point home, so here are several more redundant phrases that make your writing flabby and verbose. As a result, be sure to cut them all! Your writing will be stronger and more vigorous, so your message will shine through clearly.

Conciseness describes writing that is direct and to the point. This is not to say that you have to pare away all description, figures of speech, and images. No. Rather, it is to say that wordy writing annoys your readers because it forces them to slash their way through your sentences before they can understand what you’re saying. Writing concise and effective sentences requires far more effort than writing verbose and confusing sentences. Fortunately, your readers will appreciate your efforts.