Cut the Clutter: How to Write Clearly and Directly

An important step in the editing process is to cut out needless words--vague, repetitious, or pretentious language that can bore or confuse our readers. Here we will learn five strategies for eliminating clutter and practice those strategies in a review exercise.

As we've already seen, one of the most effective ways to improve our writing is to cut the clutter: eliminate useless words and phrases. Here are five more strategies to apply when revising and editing essays.

Here we'll apply the strategies that we have learned for cutting out needless words--deadwood that only bores, distracts, or confuses our readers.

Because what we take out of our writing can be just as important as what we put in, here we'll practice eliminating needless words--deadwood that bores, distracts, or confuses our readers.

Because we so often see and hear redundant expressions (such as "free gifts" and "foreign imports"), they can be easy to overlook. Therefore, when editing our work, we need to be on the lookout for redundancies so that we can rewrite them more concisely. Here is a list of the common redundancies.

Most online reading is actually skimming and scanning. So to grab and hold our readers' attention, we can't afford to waste words. The trick to writing lean on our blogs and websites is to keep the meaning and cut the rest. Here's how.