The Difficulty of Conciseness

Conciseness in writing is not an easy task. We must "trim the fat" of the sentence, removing unnecessary excess words and unimportant information. Eliminating specific parts of a sentance such as fillers, long lead-ins, redundancies, compound prepostions and empty words will assure success in revising for conciseness.

Fillers - words that fatten sentences using excess words such as there or it.

Long Lead-ins - uncessary introductory words such as I am or This is.

Redundancies - repeating the meaning in an expression such as perfectly clear or personal opinion.

Compound Prepositions - the use of multiple words in a phrase or expression that can be replaced by a single word such as at this point in time replaced by now or despite the fact replaced by although.

Empty Words - Expendable parts of a sentance that only lengthen and weaken clarity. Words such as  degree, factor, quality, the fact that, and instance are empty words.