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Concise Writing Guide and Practice Activity

Many English students struggle with conciseness and clarity. Below is a concise writing guide designed for business English students. For extra practice, see these concise writing exercises.


Use the Active Voice

When possible, use the active voice.

Wordy: A meeting can be arranged by our manager.
Concise: Our manager can arrange a meeting.
Wordy: Several new people have been hired and space is going to need to be found to accommodate these people.
Concise: We need to find space for the new people we’ve hired.

Of course, sometimes using the passive voice makes sense. For example, we use the passive voice when we want to emphasize the object of a sentence or if we don’t know the object.

Examples:
Next year we’ll celebrate our 15th anniversary. The company was founded in 2001.
The problem was brought to management’s attention.

 

Use a Parallel Structure

Items in a series should have the same grammatical structure. This is called parallelism.

Wordy: She is professional, courteous, and she always comes to work on time. (adjective, adjective, independent clause)
Concise: She is professional, courteous, and punctual. (adjective, adjective, adjective)
Wordy: We could fill this position now, or someone could be hired next year. (active voice + passive voice)
Concise: We could fill this position now or hire someone next year. (active voice + active voice)

 

Eliminate Obvious/Unnecessary Information

Wordy: When will we have the necessary information to make a decision on which candidate to hire for the position?
Concise: When will we be able to decide who to hire?
Wordy: I talked to my supervisor and she informed me that she would approve my vacation request.
Concise: My supervisor approved my vacation request.

Qualifiers can often be eliminated from your writing. Some common qualifiers are actually, really, basically, very, definitely, somewhat,  kind of, extremely, and practically.

Wordy: Finding a job can be really difficult for those who are somewhat inexperienced.
Concise: Finding a job can be difficult for the inexperienced.
Wordy: It’s a very good idea.
Concise: It’s a great idea.

 

Reduce Wordy Phrases

Many long phrases can be reduced to shorter, more concise phrases or words.

Wordy: It is necessary that you apply for a visa before traveling to Indonesia.
Concise: You must apply for a visa before traveling to Indonesia.
Wordy: In the event of the fire alarm going off, it is important that you leave the building immediately.
Concise: If the fire alarm goes off, you must leave the building immediately.

See this page for more phrases that can be reduced.

Sometimes we can replace a series of words with one verb.

Wordy: We have to make a decision by Friday.
Concise: We have to decide by Friday.
Wordy: We have conducted interviews with most of the candidates.
Concise: We have interviewed most of the candidates.

 

Limit Prepositional Phrases

The overuse of prepositional phrases is distracting and obscures your meaning. Some common prepositions are on, in, out, of, about, with, from, and for.

Wordy: We are looking for people with sales experience to join our team of recruiters.
Concise: We are looking for experienced salespeople to join our recruiting team.
Wordy: The profits in the first quarter were lower than expected for many companies in Europe.
Concise: First quarter profits were lower than expected for many European companies.

 

Practice

Make the sentences more concise.

1. A great number of people feel that people who work for the government need to be able to communicate with the public in a more effective way.

2. In the last few weeks, some new employees have been hired by the company.

3. It is possible that we will have another meeting to talk about the matter of bonuses at the end of the year.

4. Basically, management conducted interviews with our clients and decided that we need to have more training regarding customer service.

5. Due to a request made by the client, we are not permitted to send these emails to anyone who works outside of the company.

6. It is the opinion of the team that we are capable of handling the task.

7. We are looking for people that have compassion to become volunteers each and every Thursday night.

8. We feel we should have been told by management about the new policy regarding work from home.

9. In order to answer your question, it is necessary for me to research this topic further.

 

Potential Answers

1. A great number of people feel that people who work for the government need to be able to communicate with the public in a more effective way.
Rewrite: Many people feel that government employees need to communicate better with the public.

2. In the last few weeks, some new employees have been hired by the company.
Rewrite: We’ve recently hired some new employees.

3. It is possible that we will have another meeting to talk about the matter of bonuses at the end of the year.
Rewrite: We might have another meeting to talk about end-of-year bonuses.

4. Basically, management conducted interviews with our clients and decided that we need to have more training regarding customer service.
Rewrite: Management interviewed our clients and decided that we need more customer service training.

5. Due to a request made by the client, we are not permitted to send these emails to anyone who works outside of the company.
Rewrite: Per client request, we can’t send these emails to anyone outside the company.

6. It is the opinion of the team that we are capable of handling the task.
Rewrite: Our team feels we can handle the task.

7. We are looking for people that have compassion to become volunteers each and every Thursday night.
Rewrite: We’re looking for compassionate people to volunteer on Thursday nights.

8. We feel we should have been told by management about the new policy regarding work from home.
Rewrite: Management should have told us about the new work-from-home policy.

9. In order to answer your question, it is necessary for me to research this topic further.
Rewrite: To answer your question, I need to research this further.

 

Additional Practice:

Concise Writing Exercises