50a Eliminating unnecessary words
50aEliminating unnecessary words
Contents:
Deleting meaningless modifiers
Replacing wordy phrases
Quick Help: Editing for conciseness
Sometimes writers say that something is large in size or red in color or that two ingredients should be combined together. The italicized words are unnecessarily repetitive; delete such redundant words.
Deleting meaningless modifiers
Many modifiers are so overused that they have little meaning.
MEANINGLESS MODIFIERS
absolutely, awfully, definitely, fine, great, interesting, quite, really, very
Replacing wordy phrases
Wordy phrases can be reduced to a word or two with no loss in meaning.
| WORDY | CONCISE |
| at all times | always |
| at that point in time | then |
| at the present time | now, today |
| due to the fact that | because |
| for the purpose of | for |
| in order to | to |
| in spite of the fact that | although |
| in the event that | if |