9.5 Concision and Active Voice

Notes

Concision means saying what you mean in as few words as needed without losing meaning.

• Cut wordy phrases: "due to the fact that" becomes because; "in order to" becomes to; "at this point in time" becomes now.
• Remove redundancy: "advance planning," "past history," "end result," and "revert back" repeat meaning.
• Prefer active voice ("The committee approved the plan") to passive ("The plan was approved by the committee") when you want a clear actor and a stronger sentence. Passive voice is fine when the actor is unknown or unimportant.
• Replace weak verbs plus nouns with strong verbs: "make a decision" becomes decide.
• Worked example: "It is my belief that the reason the team lost is due to the fact that they were tired." becomes "The team lost because it was tired."