How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times by Roy Peter Clark is true to its title: It offers a quick, joyous romp through a stack of short-writing tips, especially for online content creators.
In Chapter 20 (p.124), Clark provides sage advice about weaker sentence elements to target for cutting:
- Adverbs
- Adjectives
- Strings of prepositional phrases (used as adjectives or adverbs)
- Intensifiers (very, quite, incredibly)
- Qualifiers (seems, kind of, sort of, mostly)
- Jargon (instructional units rather than lessons)
- Latinate flab (adjudicate rather than judge)
He also shared five principles of concision from Joseph M. Williams:
- Delete words that mean little or nothing [kind of, really, actually]
- Delete words that repeat the meaning of other words [various and sundry]
- Delete words implied by other words [terrible tragedy]
- Replace a phrase with a word [in the event of becomes if]
- Change negatives to affirmatives [not include becomes omit]