Edit for Clarity
You have written your draft; now comes the work that separates an amateur document from a professional one. Editing for clarity means removing everything that makes a busy reader work harder than they need to. This part shows you how to cut clutter, choose active and concise phrasing, and understand why clear writing is so hard to produce, so every later skill has a cleaner draft to act on.
Cut the Clutter
Most first drafts are too long. Cutting words is not about losing content; it is about removing the words that make the reader work harder. Concise writing is read, understood, and acted on faster.
Look for and remove:
empty openers (“I am writing to inform you that…”)
doubled-up phrases (“each and every”, “first and foremost”)
filler (“in order to” -> “to”; “at this point in time” -> “now”)
repetition of an idea already stated
Compare:
✗ “I am writing to let you know that, due to the fact that the room is unavailable, we will need to go ahead and reschedule the meeting to a later date.”
✓ “The room is unavailable, so we are rescheduling the meeting.”
Prefer Active Voice and Short Sentences
WPWD recommended short sentences and the active voice. In editing, this becomes a concrete habit.
aim for sentences of about 15 words; split anything that runs past 25
prefer the active voice (“the team approved the plan”) over the passive (“the plan was approved by the team”), except when you deliberately want to soften tone
keep one idea per sentence
Example:
✗ “The decision regarding the schedule, which had been discussed at length during the previous meeting and was the subject of some disagreement, was finally made.”
✓ “We discussed the schedule at the last meeting. There was some disagreement. We have now decided.”
The Theory of Clarity: The Curse of Knowledge and Readability
Why is clear writing so hard? Largely because of the curse of knowledge: once you understand something, it becomes very difficult to imagine not understanding it. You leave out steps, use insider terms, and compress ideas, because to you they are obvious. The reader, who lacks your context, gets lost. Editing is the discipline of putting that lost reader back at the center of the page.
Readability is the measurable side of this. Readability formulas estimate how hard a text is from sentence length and word length: longer sentences and longer words raise the reading age a text demands. You do not need to calculate a score; the principle is enough, short sentences and common words lower the effort for every reader, expert and beginner alike.
One specific clarity-killer deserves a name: nominalization, turning a verb into a noun. It makes writing abstract and heavy.
“We made a decision” -> “We decided.”
“The implementation of the plan” -> “We carried out the plan.”
“Provide assistance to” -> “Help.”
Verbs carry energy; burying them inside nouns drains it. Hunting nominalizations is one of the fastest ways to make a draft clearer and shorter at the same time, which is why experienced editors look for them first.
Do and Don’t: Concision in Action
Each pair below fixes one specific clutter problem. Name the problem as you read.
1. Cut the empty opener.
✗ Don’t: “I am writing to inform you that the meeting has been moved.”
✓ Do: “The meeting has been moved.”
2. Kill the nominalization.
✗ Don’t: “We will conduct a review of the proposal.”
✓ Do: “We will review the proposal.”
3. Replace the filler phrase.
✗ Don’t: “In order to gain access to the room, use the side door at this point in time.”
✓ Do: “To get into the room, use the side door now.”
4. Say it once.
✗ Don’t: “The plan is finished and complete and ready to go.”
✓ Do: “The plan is ready.”
Read your own next email looking for exactly these four faults. They cover most of what makes workplace writing feel heavy.
Warm-up Practice
Take any email you have sent recently (or write a short one). Edit it to:
remove at least three filler words or empty phrases
convert at least one passive sentence to active
split any sentence longer than 25 words
Keep both versions so you can see the difference.
Your Turn! The Editing Lab
Here is a starter document: a wordy, cluttered internal note. Edit it for clarity using everything in Part 1.
Starter material (cluttered version, 86 words):
I am writing to inform you that, due to the fact that we have now reached the point in time where the storage cupboard has become full to capacity, it is going to be necessary for all volunteers to go ahead and undertake a review of their own personal belongings that are currently being stored there, in order to facilitate the making of space for the new delivery of supplies that is going to be arriving at some point next week.
Your task (about 25 minutes):
Cut empty openers and filler.
Remove nominalizations.
Split or shorten any sentence over 25 words.
Aim to roughly halve the word count without losing meaning.
Write your edited version, then compare with the model solution at the end of this chapter.
Let’s Recap!
Cutting words removes the reader’s effort, not the meaning.
Prefer the active voice and short sentences; aim for about 15 words and split anything past 25.
Hunt nominalizations: turn buried verbs back into verbs to shorten and clarify at once.
The curse of knowledge is why clear writing is hard; edit for the reader who lacks your context.
A clarity pass often cuts a draft by a third with nothing important lost.
A clear draft can still hide errors your eye slides right past. Next, we build a proofreading system that catches them on purpose rather than by luck.
Model Solution (26 words)
The storage cupboard is full. Please review your own items there and remove what you don’t need before next week, when a new supply delivery arrives.
The original was one 86-word sentence; the edit is two short sentences at 26 words, about a third of the length, with nothing important lost. That is the typical result of a clarity pass.
