Economy of Expression

Say only what needs to be said. The author who is frugal with words not only writes a more readable manuscript but also increases the chances that the manuscript will be accepted for publication.

Editors work with limited numbers of printed pages and therefore often request authors to shorten submitted papers. You can tighten long papers by eliminating redundancy, wordiness, jargon, and evasiveness, overuse of the passive voice, circumlocution, and clumsy prose. Weed out overly detailed descriptions of apparatus, participants, or procedure (particularly if methods were published elsewhere, in which case you should simply cite the original study); gratuitous embellishments; elaborations of the obvious; and irrelevant observations or asides.

Short words and short sentences are easier to comprehend than long ones. A long technical term, however, may be more precise than several short words and they are inseparable from scientific reporting.

Jargon

The main causes of uneconomical writing are jargon and wordiness. Jargon is the continuous use of a technical vocabulary even in places where that vocabulary is not relevant. Jargon is also the substitution of a euphemistic phrase for a familiar term (e.g., monetarily felt scarcity for poverty), and you should scrupulously avoid using such jargon. Bureaucratic jargon has had the greatest publicity, but scientific jargon also grates on the reader, encumbers the communication of information, and wastes space.

Wordiness

Wordiness is every bit as irritating and uneconomical as jargon and can impede the ready grasp of ideas. Change based on the fact that to because, at the present time to now, and for the purpose of to simply for or to. Use this study instead of the present study when the context is clear. Change there were several students who completed to several students completed. Reason and because often appear in the same sentence; however, they have the same meaning, and therefore they should not be used together. Unconstrained wordiness lapses into embellishment and flowery writing, which are clearly inappropriate in scientific style. Mullins (1977) comprehensively discusses examples of wordiness found in the social science literature.

Redundancy

Writers often become redundant in an effort to be emphatic. Use no more words than are necessary to convey your meaning. In the following examples, the itemized words are redundant and should be omitted:

They were both alike...

a total of 68 participants...

four different groups...

they were exactly the same as those used...

has been previously found...

small in size...

one and the same...

in close proximity...

completely unanimous...

just exactly...

very close to significance...

summarize briefly...

the reason is because...

Unit length

Unit length. Although writing only in short, simple sentences produces choppy and boring prose, writing exclusively in long, involved sentences creates difficult, sometimes incomprehensible material. Varied sentence length helps readers maintain interest and comprehension.

Similar cautions apply to paragraph length. Single-sentence paragraphs are abrupt. Too long paragraphs distract attention. New paragraphs provide a pause for the reader – a chance to assimilate one step in a conceptual development before beginning another. If a paragraph runs longer than one double-spaced manuscript page, you may lose your readers in the dense forest of typeset words. Look for a logical place to break a long paragraph, or reorganize the material. Unity, cohesiveness, and continuity should characterize all paragraphs.