How to Write Concisely (Without Losing Meaning)

Phrases like "in order to" (almost always reducible to just "to"), "due to the fact that" (reducible to "because"), "at this point in time" (reducible to "now"), and "in the event that" (reducible to "if") add length without adding meaning — they're verbal padding, often picked up from formal or bureaucratic writing conventions rather than genuine clarity needs. Running a quick /find-and-replace/ pass searching specifically for these known filler phrases across a full draft is a fast, mechanical way to trim word count without touching the actual substance of your argument.

A nominalization is a verb turned into a noun, usually requiring an extra helper verb around it — "make a decision" instead of "decide," "conduct an investigation" instead of "investigate," "provide an explanation" instead of "explain." Each nominalized version runs longer than its direct verb equivalent and typically reads as more distant and bureaucratic. Scanning a draft specifically for common nominalization patterns ("make a ___," "conduct a(n) ___," "provide a(n) ___") and converting them back to direct verbs is one of the highest-value concision edits available, because it improves both length and directness at once.

English has a number of stock phrases that pair two words meaning nearly the same thing — "each and every," "first and foremost," "basic fundamentals," "future plans" (plans are inherently about the future), "past history" (history is inherently about the past), "final outcome" (an outcome is inherently final). These pairs persist as writing habits rather than serving a real rhetorical purpose in most contexts; cutting the redundant half of each pair loses no actual information.

Not every use of "that" is unnecessary, but a large share of them are — "I believe that the plan will work" loses nothing by becoming "I believe the plan will work." A quick test: read the sentence with "that" removed; if it still reads clearly and grammatically, the "that" was very likely unnecessary. This is a small, individually low-impact edit, but it adds up meaningfully across a full document, and it's one of the easiest concision checks to apply consistently since it's essentially mechanical rather than requiring a judgment call about content.

Words like "very," "really," "quite," "somewhat," and "rather" are frequently added out of habit rather than genuine need, and in many cases weaken a sentence rather than adding useful nuance — "very unique" is a particularly common example, since "unique" already means one-of-a-kind and can't logically be modified by degree. A useful check: for each hedging qualifier in a draft, try removing it and see if the sentence's actual meaning changes; if it doesn't, the qualifier was adding length without adding information.

Two short sentences that both restate the same subject ("The report covers three topics. The report also includes a summary.") can usually combine into one sentence without losing content ("The report covers three topics and includes a summary."), cutting the redundant subject restatement. This is a slightly more judgment-dependent edit than the others here since it changes sentence rhythm, but it's a reliable source of genuine word-count reduction in a first draft that hasn't yet been revised for flow.

Passive constructions ("the decision was made by the committee" instead of "the committee decided") aren't grammatically wrong, but they typically run longer than their active-voice equivalent and often obscure who actually performed the action. Not every passive sentence needs converting — sometimes the actor genuinely is unknown or unimportant to the sentence's point — but scanning a draft for "was/were + past participle" constructions and converting the ones where the actor is known and relevant is a reliable concision and clarity improvement in one move.

Run /word-counter/ before and after a concision editing pass to see the actual word-count reduction achieved — a useful, concrete way to confirm the edit genuinely tightened the piece rather than just feeling shorter. If you're specifically worried about having introduced an accidental repeated word during a heavy edit pass (a common risk when combining or restructuring sentences), /duplicate-word-finder/ is a quick final check worth running once concision editing is done. If you're editing specifically to hit a page-based or word-based length requirement, /blog/how-many-words-is-a-page/ on this blog covers the actual math for converting between the two.