Strategies on Reducing Wordiness to Enhance Readability in Academic Writing

Wordiness can be avoided by paying attention to redundancy, use of purposeless words and phrases, and excessive use of adjectives and adverbs. Strunk Jr. states in his classic, ‘The Elements of Style,’ to “omit needless words” 5 and that “a sentence should not contain unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences” so that every word has a purpose. The use of the active voice rather than the passive voice is also advised,5 as it can shorten and clarify sentences.6 Furthermore, it states that wordiness can occur when a single complex idea is presented step by step using a series of sentences. To avoid this, researchers should combine sentences into one.5

Hedging is a method used by writers to describe tentativeness and possibility in a manuscript, to tone down the writers’ claims and conclusions.7 Common phrases, i.e., “hedges,” which are often used for this purpose, include “to our knowledge” and “we believe that.” Therefore, hedging may be taken as contributing to the wordiness of manuscripts, and writers may consider it to be unnecessary, or even have a negative effect. However, it is important to understand that hedges serve the important purpose of making claims and conclusion less absolute, and hence are not unnecessary phrases. Therefore, although excessive hedging can unnecessarily increase wordiness, as explained in our previous manuscript,7 hedges in general should not be considered redundant.

A manuscript is considered ‘readable’ when it is written clearly, accurately, and concisely, making it understandable to all readers.8 Journal guidelines and style manuals offer authors essential information on a variety of subjects. Although it is important to refer to guidelines published by global editorial associations, such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors9 and the Council of Science Editors,10 when preparing manuscripts, these do not always provide substantial guidance on actual use of language.

The American Medical Association (AMA) Manual of Style,11 however, does provide suggestions on how to avoid wordiness and redundancy. Non-native English-speaking researchers may find the section on “Redundant, Expendable, and Incomparable Words and Phrases,” in Chapter 11, entitled “Correct and Preferred Usage of Common Words and Phrases,”12 useful, as a list of redundant terms and phrases that authors might commonly use when preparing manuscripts are presented. For example, the phrases “combine together” and “could potentially”12 contain redundant words (italics), the AMA Manual of Style also provides some common words and phrases that can be eliminated without affecting the meaning, in the section entitled “Expendable Words and Circumlocution.”13 An example of this is the phrase “it was demonstrated that” or “it may be said that.” It also states that roundabout and wordy expressions, such as “as a result of” or “despite the fact that” should be avoided, and instead, “because” and “although” can be used, respectively. A list of such expressions is shown in this section of the AMA Manual of Style. Researchers often use phrases to convey meaning that could be presented in a single word, which is a reason for wordiness, and in such cases, it is favorable to use one word instead of such phrases or eliminate the phrase altogether.

The AMA Manual of Style also mentions that intensifiers and qualifiers, such as quite, very, and rather are often overused or misused, and that in many cases, they can be deleted.13 In such situations, these words can be omitted or replaced with a single word, e.g., completely wrong could be replaced with inaccurate or incorrect.

The following are some examples of omitting redundancy and reducing wordiness, from actual manuscripts written by Japanese researchers (with modifications as appropriate).

When describing an object in a scientific paper, such as an object’s length, size, texture, etc., it is often unnecessary to include a prepositional phrase, unless omitting it results in ambiguity.

Before revision:

Normal nuclei of XX cells are small in size, round in shape, and have a diameter of approximately YY μm in length.

↓

After revision:

Normal nuclei of XX cells are small, round, and have a diameter of approximately YY μm.

Important points

In the above example, it is obvious from the sentence that small is referring to size, round is referring to shape, and YY μm is referring to the (diameter) length, and hence these prepositional phrases can be omitted. However, it is important to understand that prepositional phrases are not always redundant. For example, in cases in which a measurement, such as YY μm, is stated, and if this measurement could be the length, width, height, etc., of an object, it is important to include a prepositional phrase to specifically describe the measurement.

Before revision:

The XX wall was smooth in texture and ranged from white to pale yellow in color.

↓

After revision:

The XX wall was smooth and ranged from white to pale yellow.

Important points

Again, in the above sentence, it is obvious that smooth is referring to the texture of the XX wall, and white to pale yellow is the color of the XX wall, and hence these prepositional phrases can be omitted for clarity.

Many wordy phrases, such as “it may be said that”, and “it was found that”, etc., which authors often use in manuscripts, can actually be omitted without affecting the meaning of the sentence. Non-native English-speaking researchers may feel that using such phrases will make their manuscript appear more professional or sound more like a native English-speaking researcher, however, such phrases can obscure the important points and removing them can usually improve readability. It is also interesting that the use of such redundant phrases might be affected by a researcher’s native language – for example, there may be phrases that are routinely used in papers written in a researcher’s native language, which do not make the explanation wordy, buy lead to wordiness and redundancy when directly translated into English.

Before revision:

….and hence, it may be said that XX with psychomotor retardation is distinct from YY disease.

↓

After revision:

….and hence, XX with psychomotor retardation is distinct from YY disease.

Important points

In the above example, “it may be said that” is redundant and can be removed without any change to the meaning of the sentence. As discussed in the previous example, this is a phrase that is often seen in research papers written in Japanese, and does not lead to the impression of being redundant or wordy in Japanese. However, when directly translated into English, it becomes a redundant phrase, which should be removed for better readability.

Before revision:

It is important to note that the XX surgical technique has the potential to increase YY levels, which may affect the evaluation of ZZ.

↓

After revision:

The XX surgical technique has the potential to increase YY levels, which may affect the evaluation of ZZ.

Important points

In the above example, again, the phrase “it is important to note that” does not add any important meaning to the sentence and can be omitted to improve readability and decrease word count. Particularly for sentences such as the one above, in which the content described is complicated, it is important to remove unnecessary words and phrases so that the readers can clearly understand the important points of what is being described.

Roundabout and wordy expressions that can be shortened should also be avoided for clarity, and to reduce the word count. Researchers should understand that a few such expressions in their manuscript will not make their manuscript unreadable, and in some cases may improve the flow of a paragraph. However, having numerous such expressions in a manuscript will result in a manuscript that is unclear and challenging to read.

Before revision:

Based on the fact that the clinical features of XX and YY are similar to those of ZZ, a conceptual overlap between these diseases has recently been discussed.

↓

After revision:

Because the clinical features of XX and YY are similar to those of ZZ, a conceptual overlap between these diseases has recently been discussed.

Important points

As a general rule, the phrase “based on the fact that” can be refined to “because” for readability and simplicity. In the above example, what the reader wanted to express in 5 words can be expressed in 1 word. Knowing roundabout phrases that can be shortened, such as this example, is very useful when trying to reduce the word count for manuscript sections, such as the Abstract, which have a strict word count.

Before revision:

XX myotubes had an increased number of nuclei compared with YY myotubes.

↓

After revision:

XX myotubes had more nuclei than YY myotubes.

Important points

In most cases, “increased/decreased number of” can be simplified to “more/fewer”, as it is obvious from the sentence that the researcher is referring to the number of something. Furthermore, in this sentence, “compared with” was simplified to “than”, as for “more” and “fewer/less”, “than” can be used instead of “compared with,” further reducing wordiness.

Wordiness can have damaging effects on scientific writing. First, it makes it difficult for the reader to comprehend what is being said and this may decrease the interest of the reader.14 This is particularly crucial during the review process, because if the Editor and Reviewers cannot readily understand the content, the manuscript is likely to be rejected. Secondly, the more complex and confusing a manuscript is, it is more likely for the main objectives and/or the main results to become “lost” or “obscured” in medical writing.14 As manuscripts are intended to distribute crucial information, this would obstruct its intended purpose. Thirdly, manuscripts with poor readability will create a negative impression and lower the quality of scholarly work.8

However, it is essential to remember that high-quality manuscripts that are written concisely may not always be short or have a very low word count,1 because concise writing is not just about using the fewest words, but involves using the most effective words.15 It is necessary to select the correct words so that the intended meaning is not affected. However, as most journals have a maximum word count, particularly for the abstract, reducing the word count aiming for concision is an additional benefit for researchers.16 Reducing wordiness in manuscripts can be a challenging task, particularly for non-native English-speaking researchers, as their writing can be influenced by their mother tongue and mentality established in a non-English-speaking environment.17 However, making an effort to use such techniques will help to create clear, concise, and readable manuscripts, and increase manuscript acceptance to a journal.