Expressing oneself clearly and concisely in speech is a challenge because one has so little time to order one’s thoughts and choose one’s wording carefully, but writing is easily improved with even the briefest review. Always read over what you have written (whether it’s a tweet or a book manuscript) before you distribute or publish it—not only to adhere to the mechanical basics of grammar, syntax, usage, and style but also to check for narrative flow and conciseness. The following sentences, and the discussions and revisions that follow each one, include advice for paring unnecessary words and phrases.
1. As you establish your policies, it is recommended that you develop a comprehensive list of business activities.
When offering recommendations, avoid overly polite entreaties, and simply state the advice as an imperative: “As you establish your policies, develop a comprehensive list of business activities.” (Other words that signal an expendable phrase are advised, suggested, necessary, and imperative.)
2. Nearly all of the processes and steps conducted during this phase were planned in the early stages.
In “all of the” phrases, of is almost always optional, and the can often be safely omitted as well: “Nearly all processes and steps conducted during this phase were planned in the early stages.”
3. IPO activity has increased over the past few years, and that presents a great advantage for the company.
Be alert for opportunities to condense sentences consisting of two independent clauses into a simple statement. Here, what was an introduced observation is recast as an acknowledged phenomenon, changing the subject from “IPO activity” to “the increase in IPO activity”: “The increase in IPO activity over the past few years presents a great advantage for the company.”
4. Organizations can realize tremendous value from risk management in a cost-effective and efficient way.
The presence of way (or manner, or basis, or any similar vague noun) at the end of a sentence signals a sentence in need of abbreviation. Simply dismantle the phrase that ends with the noun and convert the adjectives that precede the noun into adverbs: “Organizations can cost-effectively and efficiently realize tremendous value from risk management.”
5. There are core sets of critical activities and critical communications that must be performed at this stage.
When a sentence or clause begins with an expletive (“There is/are” or “It is/They are”), consider omitting the phrase and beginning the sentence with the noun or noun phrase that follows (and delete the now-extraneous that that follows the subject): “Core sets of critical activities and critical communications must be performed at this stage.”
Taking Conciseness Too Far
Be cautious, however, about overzealous conciseness, as in the case of multiple nouns and noun phrases stacked in a dense swarm of words. Relaxing a sentence can be just as effective as tightening it in improving a sentence:
Overly concise: Executive management and board of directors’ expectations about scalability can be unrealistic.
Relaxed: The expectations of executive management and the board of directors about scalability can be unrealistic.
Take note that, as illustrated above, some business and technical communications are so dreadfully dull and abstract in what must be said that almost no amount of sentence tweaking can make it palatable. For an example, the first says that policies should lead to activities, as if that would never occur to readers.
Making that dreadful blather less mind-numbing by making it more concrete would help. Instead of chattering about vague policies and activities, give specific examples of each. For instance, the company’s NE division, which lost $10 million last year, needs to hire more sales staff, increase sales, and become profitable. That sort of thing.