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Helpful Hints

MAKING YOUR WRITING MORE CONCISE
by Ruth Berson

The point you are trying to make in your writing will be clearer if you say it directly and concisely, without extra words as padding. You might think of words that are not adding anything to the meaning as fat that you want to trim from your paper. To find the lard factor in your writing, count all the words in the original version, then remove as much padding as possible, then count again. Divide the difference by the original number of words. That number is your lard count.

Sometimes it's easy to trim the fat from your sentence. Here are some common phrases that can be trimmed down to one word or two:

"he is a man who" >>  "he" "owing to the fact that" >>  "since" or "because" "subsequent to" >>  "after" "make contact with" >>   "call" or "talk to" "on a daily basis" >>   "daily" "this is a subject that" >>   "this subject"

To practice cutting the lard, see if you can shorten this sentence. Then work out the lard count.

Scott was the type of person who liked to stay up late every night.

This sentence has 14 words. If you replace "Scott was the type of person who" with "Scott," the sentence reads "Scott liked to stay up late every night" -- eight words. Fourteen minus eight is six, and six divided by fourteen is .42. Your lard count is thus 42%. The next example shows how easy it is to repeat yourself when you are writing. Find the repetition, cut it, and then work out the lard count.

The first semester really stressed me out and my grades showed it. I
ended up not doing too well in my classes because of the stress.

If you look at these sentences carefully, you will notice that the second sentence contains exactly the same information as the first. Nothing new is added. Therefore, you only need one of these sentences, probably the first. Lard count: The two sentences together have 26 words, the first sentence alone has 12. Twenty-six minus 12 is 14, and 14 divided by 26 is .53 or 53%.

It's important to remember, though, that words only count as lard if they do not convey any useful meaning. Sometimes getting rid of the lard forces you to reconsider you whole sentence, and you end up with more words. For example, look at the following sentence.

I spied a peculiar, eccentric-looking man in the lobby.

A first look at this sentence suggests that "peculiar" and "eccentric-looking" convey the same information. If you cut "eccentric-looking" you would have reduced your lard by 20%. But another look reveals more possibilities for improvement. Instead of telling the reader that the man is peculiar, it might be better to simply describe his peculiar looks or behavior.

I spied a man in the lobby who was wearing a pink polka-dotted jacket
and bowing to passers-by.

You now have more words, but they are conveying information -- they are not lard.

Bibliographic note:
The idea of lard count comes from Revising Prose , a short, helpful, and entertaining book by Richard Lanham.

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