Concise writing structure
In this post we will explore different strategies for concise writing in your dissertation.
Contents
Introduction
Sophisticated academic writing is not about using fancy words or complex phrases, it is about writing clearly and concisely. Writing concisely means you make your point as efficiently as possible — which is important for your dissertation!
There are two stages in making sure your writing is as concise as possible:
- Big picture (zoomed out): This is all about planning and structuring your dissertation effectively to ensure you only include what is needed to advance your argument
- The details (zoomed in): This is were you edit individual paragraphs and sentences to enhance clarity and reduce word-count where possible.
This post will guide you through a number of strategies for both of these stages. The strategies in this post can be applied within the writing of the individual sections of your work.
Planning your dissertation
Planning your dissertation helps ensure you know what you need to write about at each stage of the process and avoid repeating claims in different parts of your dissertation. All of which will help you stay on topic and keep to your overall word count down
The Planning your dissertation resource takes you through the key stages of your dissertation and demonstrates how effective planning can support your work.
Stop and reflect
Take some time to work through this resource and reflect on what changes / additions you can make to your own planning to enhance the concision of your own dissertation.
Structuring your dissertation
Structuring your dissertation effectively has a big impact on how concisely you develop your argument across the whole dissertation and in individual chapters. Knowing what you need to write in each section helps avoid any waffling and means you only include necessary information in the right place.
The following guides will be particularly useful in structuring your dissertation. The Introduction, Main Body and Conclusion blog posts take you through the information that is needed in each of these sections.
In addition you will find our Developing and organising your argument resource useful as it provides you with a 5 point technique around defining and organising your ideas into coherent structure.
Stop and reflect
Take some time to work through these resources and reflect on what strategies you can integrate into your own writing to support the concision of your own dissertation.
Editing for concise writing.
In this next section we will zoom in to look at how we can make individual sentences, passages and paragraphs more concise.
It is important to remember that no piece of work is perfect in the first draft. Rather than spend time trying to perfect each paragraph as and when you write them, it is often more helpful to edit your work and look for opportunities to reduce word count and refine the clarity of your writing after the first full draft.
TIP: Use the editing stage to identify opportunities to improve the concision of your writing.
Concise writing tips
There are many different opportunities and techniques to keep your writing as concise as possible and your reduce word count. In this section, we will outline a number of these techniques that you may find useful.
Redundant pairs
Redundant pairs are when you use two words or phrases to say the same thing.
Therefore, checking your writing for similar words or phrases in the same sentence is one method to reduce your word count. Removing redundant pairs from your sentence aids the concision of your writing and helps make your point with less words. When the extra words are removed the sentence will still have the same meaning. Familiar redundant pairs that you will have come across are ‘first and foremost’, ‘added bonus’, ‘a new beginning’….
- Example: “The politician was asked to cease and desist lying in parliament” can be re-written as “The politician was asked to cease lying in parliament”.
Replacing a phrase with a word
Writers often use phrases to add meaning to their writing but when used excessively they can significantly add to the word count. By replacing phrases with single words you can write concisely and reduce your word count.
- Example — you can replace “Has an ability to” with “can”.
- “He has an ability to write concisely” can be amended to “He can write concisely”.
Changing negatives to affirmatives
Using negatives to express meaning in your work uses extra words. By changing a negative to an affirmative, you can reduce your word count and be clearer in your writing.
- Negative example: The student did not remember to edit their work for clarity in the editing stage.
- Affirmative example: The student forgot to edit their work for clarity in the editing stage.
Active / Passive voice
Writing in an active voice can reduce wordiness and support concise writing.
- Passive example: The code of practice was written by the chief executive office.
- Active example: The chief executive officer wrote the code of practice.
You will find further information about active and passive writing strategies in our blog post Understanding writing: active and passive voice.
Wordy vs concise sentences
Stay on topic.
As you write, keep your eye on the relevance of each sentence. Ask yourself:
- Does it relate to the opening topic sentence and fit within the context of the paragraph?
- If it doesn’t ‘fit’ then what should be changed?
Paying attention to your paragraph structure (Writing Your Main Body) can also help you stay on topic. For example, if you struggle to write a concluding sentence that connects to your argument at the end of a paragraph, this may suggest the paragraph topic itself doesn’t fit or may not even be needed.
Avoid vagueness and write accurately.
Write exactly what you mean. Accuracy and clarity are important in concise writing. The more exact you are the less ambiguous and subjective your writing will be.
- Example: “After a long period of time.” can be written more accurately (and concisely!) as “After twelve months.”.
Avoid meaningless words and phrases (e.g. adjectives, adverbs)
Unnecessary modifiers
Modifiers are viewed as filler words that don’t add to the meaning of a sentence but do increase your word count. Examples of modifiers include the following — really, definitely, probably, generally, for all intents and purposes etc
- Example: “This argument is very convincing” does the exact same job as “This argument is convincing”.
Prepositional phrases
Overusing prepositional phrases can reduce the clarity of your writing and make it wordy where it could be concise. Examples include “over, to, in, at, on, or” — a useful tip is to check your writing and annotate the prepositions — can you amend the sentence and remove prepositions without changing the meaning of the sentence?
- Example: “This strategy can help to reduce costs” can be amended to “This strategy can help reduce costs.”
Unnecessary intensifier and qualifiers
Removing intensifiers and qualifiers from your writing can make it more impactful and reduce your word count. Examples include words such as somewhat, definitely, quite, fairly, typically etc. Read through your sentences and identify where removing intensifiers and qualifiers can assist the flow of your writing.
- Example: “the driver definitely failed to signal she was turning left” can be amended to “the driver failed to signal she was turning left”.
Stop and reflect
One you have written your first draft return to this section and take some time to work through these strategies and reflect on how you can use them to aid the concision of your writing.
Practical tips
Know your writing habits
- We all have our own writing habits and ticks that usually come out during our first drafts (I overuse however far too much!). Becoming familiar with your own writing habits can help you quickly identify opportunities to reduce word-count. To help with this, read through the strategies listed above and think about which you do most commonly in your own writing. Once you know your own habits you can quickly prioritise which things to look for and edit in your own writing.
“Ctrl & f”
- If you know you overuse certain words or phrases that add to your word-count you can quickly press ‘Ctrl’ and ‘f’ on your keyboard to locate all examples of them in your work. This is a great time-saver!
Change text when editing.
- It is easy to become ‘blind’ to wordiness in your own writing when you have spent so long working on your dissertation. Changing the text size, font style or even printing out a hard-copy can help you approach your work with fresh eyes and make it easier to identify passages that can written more concisely.
- You may find other useful strategies in our Proofreading your writing resource.
Online resource-blog post
- The Library Student Team have pulled together a list of handy tips for researching and writing your dissertation.
- Dissertation Experience: Tips for researching and writing your dissertation
Further support
The Library has produced a series of academic writing guides which focus on strategies to improve your writing. These offer guidance and examples of different elements you can look to include and ensure that each section performs a useful function within the larger piece of writing.
- Online resource: The Start to Finish: writing resource pulls together all the support we provide around developing your academic writing.
- Online resource: A key resource that will help you with the structure of your dissertation is Start to Finish: Dissertations. This covers planning your dissertation, choosing a topic and getting started with your literature review.
- Online resources: You can find a full list of all our online resources on University of Manchester Library website.
- Contact us: You can also contact us (via our Ask an Expert service) at any time if you have a specific research question, or need specialist help with a particular database.
