Learning and Teaching Centre—Instructional Materials Developers
Combat wordiness: avoid unnecessary prepositions
A sentence with too many prepositions (e.g., to, of, in) is like a tethered hot air balloon. Get
airborne with your writing by revising sentences with as few prepositions as possible.
Example
Instead of:
The child with the injury was visited by one of the top hockey players in the
province of B.C.
Write:
A top B.C. hockey player visited the injured child.
A tip from the BCIT editing community
– Jim, Kathleen, Gary, Barb
Tweaking words to shine the distance