Clarity & conciseness

The formality of academic writing and the complexity of its subject matter all too often lead to a style that is needlessly opaque. Yet, elegant academic writing should be clear and concise. This applies at all levels of the text.

• At the text and paragraph level, ideas should be carefully structured to avoid needless repetition and elaboration. Eliminating less important details, references and examples will help you clarify your central ideas.
• At the sentence level, a number of strategies can be applied to make your writing both clearer and more precise.

Ways to achieve clarity & conciseness

• avoid unnecessary nominalization and usage of weak verbs
• eliminate wordiness: cut or shorten emphy words or phrases; cut unnecessary repetition, reduce clauses to phrases and phrases to single words; condense using participles
• avoid constructions beginning with there is or it is
• combine sentences