How to write more efficiently

A big part of any editor’s job is tightening sentences and paragraphs. After a while, cutting out needless words becomes a compulsion, which can make it difficult for editors like me to function day to day in our increasingly verbose world.

Have you looked up a recipe online lately? They’re about 8,000 words long and start with either a poorly told story about someone’s Nana in the old country or a long list of things a stranger’s kids or spouse likes to eat.

Online reviews are often wordy to the point of being unreadable: “My friend and I were looking for a place to eat and we had heard about Mel’s Diner and had driven by it many times, so we decided to try it. We had heard good things. So we made a reservation.”

I usually stop reading around this point. Obviously, the reviewer wanted a place to eat. Obviously, she decided to try it. Obviously, they made a reservation. Obviously, a user on an online restaurant review site had probably heard about the restaurant and wouldn’t be trying it if all the things she heard were bad. There’s just no way I can focus on the message when, in my mind, I’m drawing a red line through every word.

But editors aren’t the only people affected by flabby prose. Unnecessary words blunt the impact of the writer’s message and waste the reader’s time. And because these days everyone’s a writer — either via email, social media, blogs, ecommerce sites or some other outlet — keeping prose tight can give you an edge in getting your message across.

Here are a few tips for writing more efficiently.

Don’t say things the reader already knows

My made-up diner review above shows how longer passages can be packed with unnecessary information. But this is a problem at the sentence level, too.

“XYZ Company is a company that makes widgets.” The heart of this sentence is: the company is a company. You’ll have a much greater impact on your reader if you state only the facts that aren’t self-evident: XYZ Company makes widgets.  

Here’s another wordiness problem I see a lot: “The company has been in business for 60 years, having been founded in 1965.” That’s like saying six of the donuts had been eaten and six were left of the dozen. If your reader wants to know how long it’s been since 1965, they can do the math themselves.

Don’t reference what you already said

Here’s a passage I saw in a finance article recently: “As I said above, Joby is a pre-revenue company. That said, the company is not just twiddling its thumbs, waiting for FAA approval.” Note the triple whammy: “As I said above,” followed by a repeat of what was said above, followed by “that said.” 

Terms like “aforementioned,” “as previously stated” and “as noted above” are almost never worth your reader’s time.

Don’t rate what you’re about to say

“Finally, it's worth pointing out that Joby had about $991 million in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet at the end of June.” As a recovering abuser of the phrase “it’s important to note that,” I understand the impulse to write these needless words. But they should almost always be cut out.

Scrutinize every adverb and adjective

A lot of writers use adverbs unthinkingly, as if they were going for a rhythm without regard for meaning. A real example I saw recently: “experts were decidedly uncertain.” I can’t think of a single adverb that could improve the word “uncertain,” and I can’t think of a worse one than “decidedly.” Adjectives are less fraught, but they’re often redundant, as in “armed gunman.” Every opportunity to delete a word like “armed” is an opportunity to make your writing more palatable.

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