Concision - Graduate Writing Center

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Concision


Concision is among the most frequently touted properties of effective writing, and with good reason: reading is hard work, and readers generally don’t want to sift through superfluous language or material to extract the meaning of your text.

We often think of concision as the opposite of “wordiness”—using more words than necessary to communicate a point. That’s not a bad rule of thumb. Take these phrases, for example, which include words that add nothing to their meaning:

  • Absolutely essential”: “essential” implies “absolute”
  • Advance warning”: a warning by definition occurs in advance
  • Added bonus”: a bonus is always something additional
  • “Alternative choice”: these words serve equivalent functions; we only need one

Trimming out unneeded words will greatly contribute to the concision of your writing.

 

Putting the action of the sentence in a verb

Another technique for achieving concision is to make sure the action of the sentence is located in the verb(s):

The data are first put through a processing phase, after which point an analysis is performed on the data.

The verbs here are “are put” and “is performed,” but they don’t really convey our sense of what’s happening in this sentence—namely, processing and analyzing.

Depending on which words are essential to the meaning of this sentence, it can probably be much more concise:

  • “are . . . put through a processing phase” could be shortened to “are processed”
  • “an analysis is performed” can be shortened to “analyzed”
  • “after which point” = then

The resulting sentence might read something like this one:

The data are processed and then analyzed.

Here’s a somewhat more complex example that combines the issues we’ve discussed so far:

The cornerstone to the government providing essential emergency services to its citizens is ensuring there has been effective planning to anticipate a variety of challenges to deliver these critical services.

It just sounds wordy, right? And, indeed, there’s a lot we can condense or remove here:

  • “Effective planning” would surely involve “anticipat[ing] a variety of challenges.”
  • “providing essential emergency services” and “deliver[ing] critical services” refer to the same idea; do we need both?
  • “The cornerstone . . . is,” an expression that indicates something is essential, can be replaced with a more precise and literal verb like “must” or “requires.”
  • “ensuring there has been effective planning”: the action here seems to be “planning”; let’s make that a verb as well.

Assembling these revisions might result in a sentence like the following, with fewer words and more clarity:

To provide essential emergency services to its citizens, the government must plan effectively.

 

Sometimes, more is better

It’s important to note, though, that concision is not simply a matter of using fewer words: fewer is not always better. Rather, concise writing expresses ideas compactly but also clearly, avoiding redundancy and superfluity but without sacrificing precision.
 

Noun Clusters

Take, for example, this sentence, which ends in a noun cluster—a clump of nouns with no words in between explaining how they relate to each other:

Another critical consideration is adversary detection prevention.

What’s going on here? Are we concerned with adversaries not being able to see us or vice versa? “Adversary detection prevention” encompasses few words, but it’s also ambiguous; compare these sentences, which use more words but are also clearer:

  • Another critical consideration is preventing adversaries from detecting dismounted forces.
  • Another critical consideration is that dismounted forces might be unable to detect adversaries.

 

Passive Voice

The passive voice also challenges the notion that “fewer is better.” This sentence is in the passive voice:

The most authoritative account of the Great Umbrella Tariffs of 1810–13 was written by Philippa von Phrasewitz in the years immediately following those storied events.

Changing the verb to active voice shortens the sentence slightly—makes it nominally more concise:

Philippa von Phrasewitz wrote the most authoritative account of the Great Umbrella Tariffs of 1810–13 in the years immediately following those storied events.

But leaving it in passive voice and removing the “by” phrase also results in a shorter sentence—the shortest of all; this one, though, is less clear, as we no longer know who is performing the action:

The most authoritative account of the Great Umbrella Tariffs of 1810–13 was written in the years immediately following those storied events.

 

In conclusion

Concision is a worthy goal, but your overriding object as an academic writer is clarity. Careful concision can contribute substantially to clarity, while excessive concision—rotely seeking to minimize word count—can obscure or withhold essential information. The key to clear, concise writing is removing anything that is unnecessary and nothing that is not.

 

More Thoughts on Concision

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Writing Topics A–Z


This index makes findings topics easy and links to the most relevant page for each item. Please email us at writingcenter@nps.edu if we're missing something!

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A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

A

abbreviations

abstracts

academic writing

acronyms

active voice

adjectives, compound

advisor, selecting and working with

AI

apostrophes

appointment with GWC coaches, how to schedule

argument

article usage

artificial intelligence

assignments, understanding them

audience

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B

body paragraphs

booking an appointment with a GWC coach

brackets, square

brainstorming

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C

capitalization

citations

charts

ChatGPT

citation software

citation styles

clauses

clarity

clustering

coaching, about

coaching, how to schedule

colons

comma splices

commas, FANBOYS

commas, introductory

commas, list

commas, nonessential / nonrestrictive information

commas, Oxford

commas, serial

common knowledge

commonly confused words

compare-and-contrast papers

compound adjectives / modifiers

concision

conclusions

conference presentations

conjunctive adverbs

coordinating conjunctions

copyright and fair use

critical thinking

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D

dangling modifiers

dashes

dependent clauses

dependent marker words

display equations

distance learning

double submission of coursework

drafting

Dudley Knox Library

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E

editing your own work

editing: outside editors

em dash

en dash

equations

exclamation points

executive summary

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F

FANBOYS

FAQs

figures

first person, use of in academic writing

footnotes

fragments

free-writing

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G

generative artificial intelligence (AI)

gerunds

grammar

graphics

graphs

group writing

GWC appointment, how to schedule

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H

homophones

Honor Code, NPS

human subjects research

hyphens

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I

ibid.

incomplete sentences

independent clauses

Institutional Review Board

interviews, conducting

introductions

IRB

iThenticate

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J

Joining the Academic Conversation

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L

LaTeX

library liaisons

lists, syntax of

literature reviews

logic and analysis

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M

M dash

making a GWC appointment

mathematics

memos

methodology

modifiers, compound

modifiers, misplaced

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N

N dash

nominalizations

note-taking

noun clusters

numbers

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O

organization

outlining

Oxford comma

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P

paragraph development

parallelism

paraphrasing

parentheses

parts of speech

passive voice

periods

persuasion

phrases vs. clauses

plagiarism, how to avoid

plagiarism-detection software

plain language

polishing

prepositional phrases

prepositions

pronouns, clarity with

pronouns, grammar of

proofreading

publishing

punctuation

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Q

questionnaires, administering

questions

quotation marks

quoting

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R

Reading with Intent I

Reading with Intent II

redundancies

reference software

reflection papers

research

research guides, discipline-specific

research questions

restrictive vs. nonrestrictive information

reusing papers

reverse outlining

revision

roadmaps

run-on sentences

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S

scheduling a GWC appointment

self-citing

semicolons

sentence fragments

serial comma

signal phrases

significance

so what?

source blending

sources, engaging with / critiquing

sources, evaluating the reliability of

sources, citing

spelling

standard essay structure

STEM / technical writing

Strategic Reading I

Strategic Reading II

style

subject–verb agreement

subjects, grammatical

subordinating conjunctions

summarizing

surveys, administering

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T

tables

teams, writing in

technical writing

tense

that vs. which

thesis advisor, selecting and working with

thesis process overview

Thesis Processing Office (TPO)

thesis proposals: common elements

thesis statements

thesis writing

this, that, these, those

tone, professional

topic sentences

transitions

types of papers

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U

United States or U.S.?

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V

verbs and verb tense

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W

which vs. that

why write?

writer’s block

writing in groups / teams

writing process

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Z

Zotero

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