Writing Labs

Eliminating Deadwood

Deadwood is another word for “wordiness.” And wordiness can be contagious. You may start your professional life with a natural, concise writing style, but after a while you may notice that other writers in your organization are incorporating inflated language, redundancies and long sentences into their documents. Before long “bureaucratese” and gobbledygook begin to sound natural. Your writing has now become infected. Remember wordiness and pomposity do not equal formality. And simple words do not equal simple ideas.

Clarity, conciseness and simplicity of word choice do make a difference, especially when the message is complex or the reader is uninformed. Conciseness does not necessarily mean brevity.

The following tables will help you avoid “deadwood.”

Watch for redundancies
Don’t write	Write
absolutely complete	complete
advance planning	planning
ask the question	ask
assembled together	assembled; gathered
continue on	continue
cooperate together	cooperate
consensus of opinion	consensus; general opinion
each and every	each; every
Easter Sunday	Easter
exactly identical	identical
Jewish rabbi	rabbi
past experience	experience
shrugging her shoulders	shrugging
the reason is because	because

Avoid roundabout prepositional phrases
Don’t write	Write
as of this date	as of today
at the present time	now
by means of	by
for the purpose of	for
inasmuch as	since
in order to	to
in a position to	able; can
in short supply	scarce
in view of	because
in the event of	if
in the amount of	for
prior to	before
subsequent to	after
with the exception of	except
with reference to	about
with the result that	therefore; thus; so that