Ever had one of those friends who explained too much?  Ask them a question, like, “Where have you been?”  and you’ll get a five-minute answer.  While you sit there just wanting to know where he went, he gabs on explaining why he went there, who was with him, why he went with those people and why he didn’t go with this other person.  Yeah, too much explanation.

The same kind of problem plague many student essays.  Pick a random sampling of ten or so, for instance, and you’ll find the same issues cropping up: overexplanation, too much unnecessary details and seemingly endless exposition.

How do you know when you’re explaining too much?

First, don’t rely on your thoughts while writing the first draft.  No matter how perfect you think it is, it probably isn’t.   The only time you’ll catch this problem is during review, so set aside time to go over and revise your work.

• Watch out for descriptions.  Long descriptions are usually guilty of this fault, so look for definitions, expositions and depictions that take more than a couple of sentences.
• Watch out for weak arguments.  Weak arguments, where you’re usually lacking in strong evidence and facts, can compel you to craft a long and winding explanation to defend your position.
• Watch the pace.  Explanations should help fill in the blanks in the reader’s understanding.  If your explanations feel boring, dragging or downright confusing, then it’s not doing its job correctly.

At almost every workplace I’ve been in, verbosity is always one of the most prevalent problems among internally circulated documents.   For some reason, there’s a propensity for people to use too many words when writing at work, as if their work performance depended on how many words they can cram into each paragraph.

The good news is, it isn’t that hard to improve conciseness in your workplace documents.  Here are a few things you should look into implementing to make it happen:

1. Start from the top.  Organizations tend to be run like a “follow the leader” type deal.  If the bosses write a certain way, those under them will usually write the same way, mimicking how they form their sentences and paragraphs in order to foster rapport.  The only way to make an office-wide reform work is if it starts at the top.
2. Avoid trying to sound authoritative. There’s too much of that going around in offices, it’s like a flu.  Instead of actually being authoritative, the text end up sounding stiff and, often, filled with too much fluff designed to establish the writer’s authority.
3. Avoid chatty language.  Get to the point. Keep the gossip and personal talk for the water cooler.  Stay on business matters when writing business emails.
4. Use a grammar software.  Modern writing software come with plenty of features that allow you to really trim down writing into a tight bundle.   Take advantage of it.
5. Review your documents. Any time you write something, review it and assess whether it’s possible to word it in a shorter and more concise manner.    Too many times, office documents gets passed around in its first draft form.  Taking an extra couple of minutes to go over them can make a huge difference.

Been chastised more than a few times for wordiness?  It might help to examine which elements of writing tend to make this a problem for you.   Here are some areas to look at:

Stacked modifiers.  Do you stack modifiers frequently?   While stringing modifiers can be helpful, it’s usually rare that you need to do it.  If you find yourself using multiple adverbs and adjectives for a single item several times in a piece, then you might want to consider finding more appropriate words to describe them.  Even worse, this can lead to noun strings that are impossible to understand.

Passive sentences.  If half of your sentences are in the passive form, then you’re likely relying on them too much.  Don’t.  Go through your writing and rewrite as many passive sentences into their shorter active equivalent.

Empty openers.  Starting sentences with “There is” and “It is,” along with their other variants, usually leads to wordy construction.  Rewrite those sentences to begin with something else and they’ll usually end up more concise.

Empty phrases.  Some phrases we add to our sentences (e.g. “as a matter of fact,” “in my opinion”) often aren’t necessary.    Usually, they find their way to the page out of habit more than anything.  If you find yourself doing this often, then it’s one area to definitely work on.

Using noun forms of verbs.  While doing this  can create a necessary variation in the way your paragraphs flow, they often just result in sentences that are longer and less clear than they can be.  Avoid this whenever possible.

Wordiness is a serious affliction to any piece of writing, as it makes erstwhile interesting topics sound impossible to appreciate.   Every word you write should pull its own weight.  Words that don’t is excess weight that you should shed to keep the writing fit and trim.

There are four general types of errors writers commit that lead to wordy constructions.  These are:

1. Prolixity.  This refers to the introduction of too many details into the piece to the point that it’s unnecessary.  You only need to include as many facts as are required to clarify the point.  Once that’s done, move on.  Otherwise, you can end up exhausting the reader with information they don’t need.
2. Tautology.  This happens when you repeat an idea without the need to do so.  While repetition makes sense if you want to drive a point home, remember to reserve that for those details that may either be misunderstood or forgotten in the text.  If saying it one time is clear enough, don’t bother repeating.
3. Redundancy.  This refers to those words that serve no grammatical or rhetorical purpose in the sentence.  Basically, it’s those words you can omit and no one will miss.  So omit them.
4. Verbosity.  The easiest to spot, this is when you use a long expression when an equivalent shorter one is available.  While it’s a good way to pad word count, it makes your writing less concise than it can be.

We’re used to writing fluff.   At least, that’s what I believe, seeing so many sentences riddled with unnecessary words again and again.  Worse, it’s often those simple, common words that end up doing us in.  Try a random check of any student paper and you’ll find the same wordy mistakes cropping up.

All of these words below are necessary in some cases.  When used incorrectly, though, they just leave your writing unnecessarily fat.  Watch out for their appearance in your sentences and trim them off whenever appropriate.

Who

Example: Sherlock Holmes is someone who can really blow a case wide open.

Rewrite: Sherlock Holmes can really blow a case wide open.

Which

Example:  That show is one which features a whole lot of sub-arcs under the main story umbrella.

Rewrite: That show features a whole lot of sub-arcs under the main story umbrella.

That

Example: My dad is a man that can be trusted.

Rewrite: My dad can be trusted.

What

Example: The engineering report is what we’ll be discussing in the meeting.

Rewrite:  We’ll be discussing the engineering report in the meeting.

There

Example:  There are officers on the way to the crime scene.

Rewrite:  Officers are on the way to the crime scene.

It

Example: It’s lofty ambition that keeps him going.

Rewrite: His lofty ambition keeps me going.

Looking for more ways to eliminate wordiness beyond what the writing software can do?  Here are a few ideas of things you can integrate into your writing process:

1. Check transition words between sentences.  While transition words are very helpful for illustrating relationships between ideas, it’s not the only way to establish connections.  Used too much, in fact, writing can sound repetitive and unimaginative.    Try other ways of achieving just that, such as the use of keywords and pronoun references.
2. Get to the subject quickly.  Avoid long phrases before introducing the subject in a sentence.  The quicker the subject shows up, the quicker the reader can get into your sentence.  All that pre-subject banter is just distraction.
3. Remove interruptions  between verbs and subject.   The shorter the distance between the verb and the subject, the easier it is to see the relationship between them.    In case you find a sentence where the distance is too much, you will need to rewrite the sentence structure to accommodate a closer proximity.
4. Remove interruptions between the verb and its object.  The subject-verb relationship reads clearer with a shorter gap and the same holds true for the connection between the verb and its object.
5. Keep modifiers close to the objects they’re modifying.  Again, distance matters.  The more interruptions exist between a modifier and the word it modifies, the less effective it becomes at achieving its purpose in the sentence.

Wordiness is a seductive trap. It’s true. How many times have you sat down to write and found the allure of throwing more words than is necessary irresistible? After all, an extra word here and an extra phrase there shouldn’t affect clarity all that much, all while giving us a heftier word count to run with.

Unfortunately, even a single unnecessary word every other sentence can add up. That extra clarity lost can multiply when taken as a while. Minor transgressions can lead to poor writing that’s more than the sum of its parts and that’s the biggest problem with wordiness.

Why do people construct wordy sentences? There are three main reasons:

1. To pad their word counts. Many writers get accustomed to throwing in a few extras just to make required page lengths. It’s definitely easier than going back and constructing an extra argument or digging up additional facts. Lazy editing is a major culprit to wordy constructions. Everybody knows it.
2. To be ambiguous. Some writers like to make their thoughts invisible, whatever their personal reasons might be. Being wordy is an easy way to achieve that.
3. It just happens. Some people just aren’t that good when creating early drafts. As such, their work is riddled with unnecessary ramblings and explanations.

Like all writing problems, wordiness is best handled during editing and revision. Sure, ridding your text of unnecessary elements is a chore that’s not at all easy to accomplish, even with the help of the best English writing assistant. But it must be done.

Has anyone ever told you that your writing tends to fall on the wordy side?  If you’ve been accused of excessive wordiness, you may want to consider a few strategies to help leave your writing more concise, apart from using a working grammar software.

Give Yourself A Breather. Don’t revise your paper as soon as you edit it.  Always spend a few minutes a way from your draft before returning to revise it.  Ideally, you shouldn’t edit until the next day.  If you’re pressed for time, though, a quick coffee break or a couple of smokes will do.

Take Notes When You Edit. Taking notes will help you keep a tab on what patterns of wordiness you end up regularly committing.  That way, you can watch out for them during your future writing endeavors.

Pay Particular Attention To Difficult Paragraphs. If there are specific sections of your writing that you struggled on, pay particular attention to them during the editing phase.  More than likely, these areas will contain the worst offenses when it comes to wordiness.

Replace Passive Verbs. You’ve heard this advice a thousand times before.  That’s because passive verbs tend to lead to wordy sentences.  Update them to their active forms and immediately cut the text down to size.

Prepositional Phrases. Those relationship words like “of,” “from” and “after” should be replaced with one-word modifiers.  You’ll be amazed at how much wordiness you can shave off from eliminating these alone.  You’ll likely end up having to rewrite offending sentences, though.

Watch Out For Specific Words. Check for specific filler words such as “which,” “that,” “should,” “would,” and “could.”  Eliminate them whenever you can.