: Re: How To Write Concisely I am a high school student, and am concerned with my recent compositional tendencies. This past year, I took AP English Language and Composition. It was a rather difficult

@Debbie451

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What a great question! Your instincts are good. "Excessively ornamented and often times convoluted" writing may earn you high marks in a class, or even in academia. But in the real world setting, simple and direct gets the job done. I have 3 pieces of advice that I've learned from others (or learned the hard way) over the years:

Vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary. Never use jargon or a 50 cent word when a simpler word does just as well. BUT, it is good to use jargon or a 50 cent word in place of a longer, more elaborate phrase.

For example, as a medical student, I would use the phrase "Painful to palpation" in many of my notes: "The Patient's abdomen was painful to palpation." Finally, the resident told me one day, "Look: the word is tender." So my notes became more concise, easier to read, and more expressive when I just wrote "The patient's abdomen is tender."

Having a good vocabulary is crucial. But don't use a fancy word just for the sake of using a fancy word. Make your statements as simple as possible. Use fancy words when they make sentences more concise. Don't use fancy words when they make sentences longer than the plain English version.

"Get the lard out." This is a phrase one of my teachers used to use. It means "be direct." When writing for an academic audience, we can't help but add a bunch of useless (often introductory) phrases that add nothing but bulk to the paper. We all include them out of habit, because we hear or read them so much.

For example, I'm editing a document now that starts with:

"This document provides descriptions of the requirements necessary to implement changes in the program."

I'm recommending it be changed to:

"This document describes required changes to the program."

It's hard to come up with good examples on the spot. And it's hard to be succinct about what to watch out for. But once you get in the habit of watching for "lard," you'll see it everywhere. In this example, the red flags are redundancy such as "requirements necessary" (if the "requirements" aren't necessary, they're not requirements, are they?) or "implementing changes" ("implementing" already implies a change of some kind). Using non-specific verbs ("provides") also requires you to tack on extra verbiage to make the meaning less ambiguous ("provide descriptions"). Why not just start with a more precise verb to begin with ("Describes...")

Revisions and editing. If you're being asked to do a lot of on-the-spot timed writing, you won't be able to revise much. So this tip won't help much with that. But "getting the lard out" really does require numerous drafts, sleeping on something overnight so you can look at it with a fresh eye the next day, and a dedicated effort to, say, "shorten a section by 50%." This is where practice comes in, too.

If you're a high-school student, take heart. If you take writing classes in college, you'll get plenty of additional practice. And the instruction gets more sophisticated, too.

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