Concise writing presents ideas clearly and does not use more words than are truly necessary. Conciseness is an important characteristic of academic writing, especially given how complex the subject matter frequently is.

Two of the biggest enemies of concise writing are inflated phrases and redundancies. It’s easy to think that using more complicated-sounding phrases will give your text a more academic feel, but mostly it just makes it harder to follow.

Using the below strategies will make your writing not only tighter but also more effective.

Avoid inflated phrases

One of the simplest ways to make your writing more concise is to avoid “inflated” phrases that use several words where just one or two would be sufficient.

Avoid redundancies

Another easy way to make your writing more concise is to avoid redundancies, which occur when the same idea is being expressed twice. In most cases, the meaning of one word is clearly implied in another (for example, isn’t a summary by nature brief? Could collaboration be done in any other way but together? Isn’t an import by definition foreign?).