Clear and Concise Sentences
Get to the Point!
Standard 8.4.7
“A sentence should contain no
unnecessary words, for the same
reason that a drawing should have no
unnecessary lines and a machine no
unnecessary parts.” --William Strunk
What root word do you see?
Concise
Clear and Concise Sentences
A sentence is not concise simply
because it is short; a concise sentence
contains only the number of words
necessary to achieve its effect or to
make its point.
When would you want to use this type of
sentence in your writing?
When would you NOT want to use this
type of sentence in your writing?
How to Make Sentences Clear and
Concise
• Cut down on extra, repetitive, and unnecessary words
• One way to find out which words are essential to the meaning of a
sentence is to underline the key words (the words that give the sentence
meaning. Who, what when, where, why, how, etc.)
• Then, look carefully at the remaining words so that you can see which
are unnecessary and delete them.
Try it! Underline the necessary words.
There were many factors that influenced his decision to become a
teacher.
They played a softball game that was exhausting.
Get Rid of Deadwood!
•Deadwood- Unnecessary phrases and words that take up space and
add nothing to meaning
The problem with deadwood:
Deadwood distracts and annoys the reader
and weakens your writing style.
Deadwood: “Meaningless” words
Eliminate common words that add little meaning or relevance to sentences.
Examples include kind of, sort of, type of, actually, really, various, virtually, basically,
generally, practically, specific, particular, truly, clearly, obviously, and undoubtedly.
Actually, Mary kind of glanced at Bob when she realized they had
basically lost the battle.
Deadwood: Repetitive Words
Do not combine pairs of words when the meaning of one implies the
other.
Examples: final outcome, past history, free gift, sudden crisis, each individual, future
plans, end result, true facts, actual truth, first and foremost.
The future plan Congress will propose to completely overhaul the
healthcare system could negatively frustrate constituents.
Deadwood: using “is” as a crutch
Using "is" in a sentence gets it off to a slow start, and makes the sentence weak.
Replace as many "to be" verbs with action verbs as you can, and change all
passive voice ("is defended by") to an active voice ("defends").
Circle the “is” form
The point I wish to make is that fish sleep with their eyes open.
Practice
Underline key words and cross out dead wood to get
you started.
Then, rewrite the following sentences eliminating
meaningless or redundant words. You may have to
modify the sentence structure.
1. When I asked her about the new job, she sort of looked at me with anger and
basically did not reply.
2. Now that Bob has truly been fired, appealing to the CEO is kind of useless.
Practice
First, copy the sentence. Underline key words and cross
out unnecessary ones to get you started.
Rewrite the following sentences eliminating
meaningless or redundant words. You may have to
modify the sentence structure.
3. Each individual will receive a free gift during the upcoming ceremony tomorrow.
4. Committee members first began by discussing the new marketing plan; then they
presented the true facts about foreign imports from Belgium.
5. Anthropologists really believe these old fossils are absolutely crucial to uncovering our
past history.