Welcome to the next lesson in our journey to sharpen your journalistic writing. In our previous session, we honed in on two specific patterns of wordiness: nominalizations ("zombie nouns") and expletive constructions ("There is..."). You learned how to revive your sentences by using strong verbs and starting directly with your subject.
Today, we'll broaden that focus. Our goal is to analyze and tighten sentences by eliminating all types of redundancies and unnecessary words. This skill is at the heart of professional writing. In journalism, especially in the fast-paced world of entertainment news, every word must earn its place. By trimming the fat, you make your writing more powerful, your arguments clearer, and your reader's experience more engaging.
This lesson will take you about 60 minutes.
1. The Philosophy of Conciseness: Compression, Not Just Brevity
Before we start cutting, it's important to have the right mindset. The goal isn't just to make sentences shorter; it's to make them more potent. A short, underdeveloped sentence is no better than a long, bloated one. We're aiming for compression—packing the most meaning into the fewest words possible.
The following video introduces this idea with a brilliant analogy.
The video "Concise Means More Than Short" from the Writing with Andrew channel offers a valuable perspective on what we're trying to achieve as writers.
Please watch these two clips: First, watch from the beginning to understand the core concept of compression vs. shortness. The syringe analogy is a perfect way to visualize this. Next, watch the segment on adapting to the situation. This explains that the degree of conciseness needed depends on your purpose and audience, a nuance that's key in professional writing.
The key takeaway here is that conciseness is not an absolute rule but a rhetorical choice. Our goal is to write sentences that are as "concentrated" as possible while still delivering the necessary information, tone, and impact for a piece of journalism.
2. Identifying and Eliminating Redundancy
Redundancy is the most straightforward type of wordiness. It occurs when you use two or more words that mean the same thing. Because you have a background in linguistics, you'll likely find these patterns easy to spot once you know what to look for.
A classic example from journalism is "The two singers were both alike." If they were alike, they were both alike. You only need one of those words.
This infographic is a great visual cheat-sheet for common redundant phrases.
Now, let's look at a more detailed breakdown. The following resource from the UNC Writing Center offers clear categories of redundancy and other forms of wordiness we'll tackle in this lesson.
This guide from The Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill provides excellent, clear-cut examples of common wordy patterns.
For now, focus on these three sections: 1. Eliminate redundant pairs: This covers phrases like "each and every" or "true and accurate." 2. Delete unnecessary qualifiers: This addresses "hedging" words like basically, really, and very. 4. Locate and delete unnecessary modifiers: This deals with words where the meaning is already implied, like "anticipate in advance."
In journalism, this principle is often summarized by the famous maxim from Strunk & White's The Elements of Style: "Omit needless words." As journalism professor Rick Dunham notes in his "Concise guide to writing concise stories," every word must add value. Your job as an editor of your own work is to put every word on trial for its life.
3. Replacing Wordy Phrases and Empty Filler
Beyond obvious redundancies, our writing often gets clogged with multi-word phrases that can be replaced by a single, stronger word. These are habits we pick up in conversation or from academic and bureaucratic writing. In journalism, they slow the reader down.
Common culprits include:
due to the fact that->becausein order to->toat the present time->noworcurrently(and often, even "currently" is redundant)
This next video offers a fantastic, practical guide to spotting and replacing these wordy constructions.
Writing Concise Sentences: Reducing Wordiness
This video, "Writing Concise Sentences: Reducing Wordiness," provides a toolbox of specific techniques for tightening your prose.
Pay close attention to these sections, which demonstrate several key editing tactics: Overused phrases: This gives a great list of common phrases to replace. Redundancy: A quick review of the concept we just covered, with examples like "unexpected surprise." Pretentious words: This warns against using overly complex words when a simple one will do—a key journalistic principle. Reducing clauses: This shows how to condense entire clauses into shorter phrases or even single words.
This idea of directness is central to modern journalism. Rick Dunham's guide (resource LINK) emphasizes this when he advises writers to "avoid flowery or bureaucratic language" and to "write more like you send a text message – brief and to the point."
For example:
- Bureaucratic: "Refuse and rubbish shall not be collected from the site or receptacles thereon before the hour of 8:00am or after the hour of 6:00pm any day."
- Journalistic: "Trash won't be collected before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m."
4. Practice: Tightening Sentences
Let's put this into practice. Rewrite the following sentences, which are filled with the kinds of clutter we've just discussed. Aim to make them as direct and powerful as possible, as if for an entertainment news piece.
- Due to the fact that the script was a complete and total mess, it is absolutely essential that the director start to rewrite it.
- At the present time, there is a general consensus of opinion among the cast members that the new marketing plan is very innovative.
- In order to finish the final edit, the filmmaker worked for a period of 48 hours without any sleep at all.
- It was an unexpected surprise when the band made the announcement that they would get back together again for a reunion tour.
View suggested revisions
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Original: Due to the fact that the script was a complete and total mess, it is absolutely essential that the director start to rewrite it.
- Revision: Because the script was a mess, the director must rewrite it.
- (Replaced "due to the fact that," removed redundant pairs "complete and total" and "absolutely essential," and cut the weak phrase "start to.")
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Original: At the present time, there is a general consensus of opinion among the cast members that the new marketing plan is very innovative.
- Revision: The cast agrees the new marketing plan is innovative.
- (Cut "at the present time," replaced "general consensus of opinion" with "agrees," and removed the unnecessary qualifier "very.")
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Original: In order to finish the final edit, the filmmaker worked for a period of 48 hours without any sleep at all.
- Revision: To finish the final edit, the filmmaker worked 48 hours without sleep.
- (Replaced "in order to," cut the wordy phrase "for a period of," and removed the redundant "at all.")
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Original: It was an unexpected surprise when the band made the announcement that they would get back together again for a reunion tour.
- Revision: The band surprised fans by announcing a reunion tour.
- (Removed the redundant "unexpected surprise" and "get back together again." The verb "announcing" is stronger than the noun phrase "made the announcement," building on what we learned in the last lesson.)
Conclusion
In this lesson, you've expanded your editing toolkit beyond specific structures like nominalizations and learned a universal principle of clean writing: make every word count. This isn't just about deleting words—it's about choosing the right words and trusting them to do their job without extra support.
Key Takeaways:
- Aim for compression, not just brevity. The goal is dense, meaningful prose, not just a low word count.
- Hunt down redundancies. Eliminate words and phrases that repeat information (e.g., "final outcome," "added bonus").
- Replace wordy phrases with single words. Swap phrases like "in the event that" for "if."
- Delete unnecessary qualifiers and modifiers. Words like very, really, basically, and actually often weaken your statements rather than strengthening them.
You now have a solid foundation for writing clean, direct sentences. In our next lesson, we will build on this by learning how to apply the principle of placing key information at the start or end of a sentence for emphasis. Now that your sentences are free of clutter, you can start arranging your powerful words for maximum impact.