Write brief, clear sentences

- You've heard of the Atkins Diet, the Paleo Diet and the Mediterranean Diet, right? They all promise to help you lose weight. But have you ever heard of the plain language diet? Didn't think so. The plain language diet helps your sentences lose words. Today's readers prefer shorter sentences of 20 to 25 words. Long sentences are confusing, and understanding them requires too much effort. Take this 48-word monster. There's potential for inconsistency in the study results due to the fact that various studies have been performed by several laboratories. Oh my goodness. No one wants to read that, and a plain language writer would never produce that. Put the sentence on a plain-language diet, however, and you have a tidy 22-word sentence that's easy to understand. Much better, right? Let me show you three ways to keep your sentences short, clear and tight. First, cut unnecessary modifiers. A modifier is a word that adds information or description to another word in the same sentence. Writers use modifiers to intensify a description. For example, in this sentence, Jason was really very hungry, the modifiers "really" and "very" are meant to intensify the extent of Jason's hunger, but these modifiers add words to the sentence without adding much specific meaning. Remove the modifiers "really" and "very" and find a more exact word, and you'll have a better plain language sentence. Keep a sharp eye out for modifiers like actually, completely, really, generally, quite, totally and very. Instead of this double modifier sentence, remove the modifiers to clarify your message or take a completely different approach. Okay, let's move on to the next sentence-trimming trick, breaking the "this and that" habit. The "this and that" habit is when you two words that mean nearly the same thing, and separate them with "and" or "or." Here's an example. You don't need both "substantial" and "measurable" in this sentence. Cut one of those words and help break the "this and that" habit. We break the "this and that" habit in this sentence by taking out the extra words in two places. Why do writers develop a "this and that" habit? I bet some think the double wording makes their writing sound profound, but believe me, it doesn't. The most profound writing is the easiest to read. Another way to shorten sentences is to replace "there" and "it" as the subject of the sentence. When you start a sentence with the words "there are," "there is" or "it is," those pronouns become the grammatical subject of the sentence, often displacing the actual subject of the sentence. Removing the "there are" from this sentence is easy. In this sentence, we'll remove the word "people," the real subject of the sentence, and use the "must" instead of "it is important." By using the verb "must," we can remove the "it is" from this sentence. We've made the sentence four words shorter, and a lot clearer. Download the exercise file and practice streamlining your sentences because while dieting is never easy, putting your sentences on a diet is easier than you think.