One-Minute Communications Tips Archive
September 2009

2 Tips on Editing Your Writing

You can edit a document in many ways. These two methods are painless
and bring quick results:

1. Omit meaningless modifiers. Many adjectives and adverbs don't add information or interest:

advance warning (you can't warn someone about the past)
end result (results are always at the end)
past history (as opposed to future history?)
could potentially (potentially implies that something could happen)
unexpected surprise (if it was expected, it wouldn't be a surprise)

This is an easy edit, because such modifiers don't modify. Banish
them.

2. Erase the phrase "the ________ of."

Phrases like these litter business documents:

the state of
the field of
the act of

Cut the entire phrase. For example, instead of "the state of Florida,"
just say "Florida." Readers will know you mean the state.

There may be instances where you need the phrase for clarity, but most
of the time, you'll do better without it.
 

© Arun Sinha, Access Communications. Access Communications is a marketing communications and technical writing firm based in Stamford, Connecticut, USA. Sign up for Access Communications's One-Minute Communication Tip at http://www.AccessConsultingInc.com. Once a month, you'll receive an actionable idea or technique on an aspect of business communications, distilled into about 150 words.

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