Writing concise sentences

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Writing concise sentences
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Concise sentences

• Redundancy and Redundancy
• 12 p.m. noon, end result, advance planning, true
  facts, successful achievements
• Cut out useless introductory phrases
• With reference to your question, I think we
  should go on Thursday.
• It seems unnecessary to point out that it is now
  raining.

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Concise sentences

• Reduce clauses to phrases
• The University of Arkansas, which was founded in
  1871, is the states flagship campus.
• Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas is
  the states flagship campus.
• Reduce phrases to single words
• Citizens who knew what was going on voted him out
  of office.
• Knowledgeable citizens voted him out of office.

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Concise sentences

• Circumlocution or talking around
• in (the) possession of has, have
• ahead of schedule early
• give rise to cause
• during the time that while
• in the event that if
• in this day and age today
• the reason why is that because
• this is a topic that this topic

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Concise sentence exercise

• Avoid expletive constructions
• It is to be expected that politicians are wordy.
• Politicians are expected to be wordy.
• There are some writers who cannot help being
  wordy.
• Some writers cannot help being wordy.
• Eliminate Clichés
• Dog-eat-dog world (competitive)
• busy as a bee (busy)

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Concise sentences

• Avoid using that when possible
• Heres the shirt (that) I just bought.
• I believe (that) I will learn a lot in this
  class.
• We thought (that) the game started at 2 p.m.
• Grammar is one subject (that) I need to study.