The best example of conciseness is the news story.  Using an inverted pyramid format, it dispenses of all the main talking points quickly, then spends the rest of the piece filling in the details.  All throughout, sentences and paragraphs are kept short to make reading effortless, with all pertinent information easily found within the text.

As you can tell, not all prose will work best when written like a news story.  Hence, the need to write in a certain style, telling the story or discussing the subject in a way that’s on point.

A detective novel, for instance, often gets written with a hard-edged style, just as a human interest piece will frequently be covered with a compassionate tone.  In both of those cases, the writers consciously adopted a style — one that they felt will be a proper fit for the piece.

Any style you adopt will suffer without economy of language.  Unless, of course, you’re intentionally setting out to write overwrought, excessively wordy and convoluted prose.   That’s why it’s important to work on both, along with the clarity and correctness of your language, to achieve the best results with your writing tasks.

When writing, you want to choose the best word to express the meaning you will convey.  If you leave room for even the slightest misinterpretation, you risk leading the reader down the wrong path.  While not life or death, it certainly warrants enough attention if you care about what the reader takes away from your piece.

The best word for the job has several characteristics:

• It’s clear.   The meaning of a word should be clear.  If it can be taken to mean anything other than what you intend, it’s probably not the best choice for this instance.
• It’s precise.  The less precise a word is, the more room you give for the reader misinterpret your ideas.  Saying a dispute is “big,” for instance, can be taken to mean that it involves a lot of people, a lot of money or a lot time to resolve.    Each reader is bound to have their own interpretation simply because you used an imprecise statement.
• It’s familiar.  If your audience requires a dictionary to understand the words you use in a piece, then you’re not making the best word choices.  You don’t have to dumb down your writing — you just need to make word choices that jive with who you’re writing for.
• It’s appropriate.  Some word choices that are appropriate to an audience of young music fans may not exactly sit well with a readership of middle-aged doctors.    Same goes for a whole load of audiences.  Choose words that are suitable to your target readers if you want to avoid offending, angering or insulting them.

However, abstract nouns do have their place.  With some sentences, in fact, they can prove essential.  One thing to note, though: a desire to sound more “academic” and “formal” isn’t a valid reason to rely on abstract nouns.

1. Abstract nouns can be used to make references to a previous sentence.  When referring to a protagonist’s previous actions in a story, for instance, it makes sense to write “these past decisions” or “these rash actions.”  Same with writing “the previous arguments” to refer to the points laid out in a previous paragraph of an essay.  In both cases, the use of abstract nouns may be valid if you’re discussing elements previously presented.
2. Abstract nouns can lead to concision.  There are some occasions when abstract nouns are just more concise than their concrete alternatives.  For instance, it’s shorter to write “his documentation of the event,” rather than “what he documented during the event.”
3. Abstract nouns can be a central concept to your sentence.  While we don’t recommend these situations, they can happen.   Timeless concepts like love, revolution and courage can be important elements to many writing topics, after all.

Look at these examples from popular literature and songs:

• “…bewitched, bothered and bewildered”
• “Instead of language we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; and instead of genuine ideas, bright suggestions.”
• “It’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s Superman”
• “…life, libery and the pursuit of happiness.”

There are countless more examples of the triumvirate pairing such as those above.  In each of those cases, the three-in-a-series approach was used to heighten the impact of the lines.  Imagine, for instance, how memorable those lines will be if they had two or five elements instead:  “Bewitched, bothered, bewildered, becharmed and beguiled” doesn’t quite carry the same punch, does it?

Why does three work better than other combinations?  Personally, I think they do because three is just long enough to avoid ending a series abruptly (a list with two items doesn’t really feel like a list), all while being short enough to avoid droning off into a monotonous rant.  Plus, most people can remember three items easily.  Add more and recall can get dicey.

Some writing software will be able to help you on this end, especially when it comes to passive constructions and similar easy-to-spot maladies.  If you want to beef up your sentence fluency, though, there are things you can start doing yourself to make them happen.

1. Vary how your sentences start.    Starting sentences the same way (e.g. always leading with “the”) is the type of writing you’ll expect from an elementary student and that’s exactly how your writing looks like when you go this route.
2. Vary the length of your sentences.  Short simple sentences are fine when read in a list.  For conveying complex thought fluently, though, they’re rarely enough.  Use different sentence lengths and types to keep your paragraphs from sounding stilted.
3. Test it by reading aloud.  The best test for how your sentences sound is to read them aloud.  If they sound awkward, a rewrite should probably be in order.
4. Limit the length to 30 words or less.  Run-on sentences tend to occur with constructions that extend past the 30-word limit.  If you want to avoid that, then cap your sentences at 30 words.
5. Minimize repetition of exact keywords within both the same sentence or succeeding sentences.  The same word repeated in close proximity creates an unnatural awkwardness.  Use synonyms and other alternatives, instead of repeating the same terms.

The fact is, there’s no right or wrong number.  It all depends on the factors surrounding the paper you are writing.

• Many novels tend to use short paragraphs with four to five sentences to speed up the pace.
• Reference books will often feature paragraphs that run the entire page.
• Newspaper stories frequently employ single-sentence paragraphs for brevity and impact.

For the purposes of school papers, we recommend sticking to four to five sentences per paragraph.  There are many good reasons to do so

1. Teachers check a lot of papers.  The longer your paragraphs, the slower your paper will be to read.  The shorter they are, the less of a chore it will be for the teacher to finish reading.
2. Short paragraphs are easier to understand.  Because the discussion is limited to a few key ideas before a long pause, there’s not a whole of material to ingest in one fell swoop.  The longer your paragraphs get, the more the reader will have to work to tie everything together.
3. Readers focus better with short paragraphs.  Because it quickens the pace, short paragraphs feel a lot more pleasant to read.  Plus, teachers can skim if they want to check your primary points without worrying that they might miss something important.

When faced with a difficult topic, here are some things you should do:

1. Find a fresh angle.   Try attacking the topic from a new angle, one that hasn’t been done to death in other papers.  Remember: there’s always more than one way of telling a story.  Explore and discover.
2. Tell it in your own voice.   Let your personality shine in your writing.  Sometimes, expressing the material in your own voice, tone and point of view is enough to make the work stand out.
3. Know what you’re writing about.   If a topic sounds hard, it could be that you’re just lacking the knowledge to sufficiently work with it.  Learn more and your whole way of looking at it could change.
4. Be entertaining.  People read for a variety of reasons, but they won’t stick around unless they’re entertained in some way.  If you approach the writing task with the goal of entertaining the reader, you could really end up communicating the topic in a more compelling way.

Capitalization. There are several styles you can use when writing out headlines and subheadings.  You can use title case, sentence case or whatever other format you’re accustomed, too.  Within the same article, any of them should do, provided you stay consistent throughout the document (or across your website, if you’re producing online content).

Fragments. You can write headlines and subheadings as sentences or fragments.  As with capitalization, though, the only requirement is that you stay consistent throughout.

Punctuation. Don’t bother with periods in headings and subheadings.  You can use commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points or even parenthesis if necessary.  As a rule, though, you want to be stingy with their use.  The more barren of punctuation your headlines and subheadings are, the better.

Parallel Structure. Normally, you will write several subheadings in a piece of writing.   While not required, it’s usually good practice to write them in a parallel format.  Doing so will avoid sloppy constructions.

Gender Use

Only use gender terms when they are accurate to the people you are addressing.  If a group can consist of more than one gender, then don’t use either masculine or feminine forms to address them, opting for plural pronouns or more inclusive nouns instead.

Attaching Labels

Labels that you attach to people are inherently biased.  Calling a group of research subjects as “disabled,” “nerds” or “obese” may be appropriate in the context of your paper, but it doesn’t diminish the fact that it demonstrates bias towards certain persons.

As a rule, you should avoid labeling whenever possible.  If unavoidable, then take careful considerations of the various factors  that surround both the label in question, the people concerned and your readers.    Your first resort should be to call a group of people what they prefer to be called, especially when it comes to race and ethnicity.   Beyond that, just be aware of how your choice of words can come across to the people reading your work.

Alternative Descriptions

There are always alternative terminologies you can use to describe people you address in your writing.  Always try out a few and see if they fit.  Doing so can help you avoid the whole mess of bias, instead of constantly teetering on the brink of offending a certain segment of readers.

These two are probably the most important of those benefits:

• It forces you to fully understand the topic.   In order to write the ending, you must know what kind of points you’re going to make and what evidence you have to support them.  If you’ve been skipping the outlining process in your previous writing activities, this will likely force you to start doing them, since it’s one of the few ways you can clarify how the ending should go.
• It gives your writing direction.  Once you’ve written the ending, you know exactly where your writing is going.  As such, your writing ends up tighter, as you have a clear path where you want to take your reader.  Your ideas don’t float around aimlessly; instead, they have an exact place they’re headed to.

What if the ending you’ve written isn’t actually the best way to finish the piece?  Then rewrite it.   The purpose of doing the ending first is to focus your mental faculties towards an end point for your work, not to stifle your ability to craft a solid paper.  If, during the course of the draft, you find a better alternative, then alter it and use that to shape the rest of the work.