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I often find myself editing prose to remove needless verbiage. Is there a word for this process? It comes up frequently enough to be useful.

I sometimes say that I tightened the wording, but perhaps this can be improved upon.

Charles
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    Informally, you might use *tersify*, but you won't find that word in a dictionary! I'm not sure about the bit in brackets in your question title: did you mean "an overly prolix title"? – Andrew Leach Nov 07 '13 at 08:29
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    @AndrewLeach: Stackexchange rejected the title "'To make terse'" as too short, so I lengthened the title by adding that remark. – Charles Nov 09 '13 at 16:51
  • Yes, but did you mean to tersify wording which was already insufficiently prolix? – Andrew Leach Nov 09 '13 at 17:35
  • @AndrewLeach: No, the only text which was (apparently) insufficiently prolix was the title. – Charles Nov 11 '13 at 15:14
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    Verbiage is, by definition, unnecessary. So "needless verbiage" is an example of itself. – David Richerby Feb 18 '14 at 15:48
  • Removing verbiage is called editing. And a title cannot be prolix. Writers are prolix, speech is prolix, but not a title. – Lambie Jun 29 '16 at 14:40
  • Similarly, "Whittle"? I like tersify. –  Jun 29 '16 at 14:38
  • Depending on the context, and on the shade of meaning you intend to convey, I would suggest any of the following: refine, distill, hone, focus, streamline, or abbreviate. – jdmc Feb 21 '20 at 19:02

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You could say that you streamlined the wording.

You could also talk about tidying up the writing.

But I actually like both tighten and edit.

e: Was rereading Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards, and the fictional narrator describes this process thusly:

... for the past twenty-one years, we have had the honor of refining, or, if we are permitted, "honing" the notebook ...

I like both refining and honing for this process. Refining, in particular, describes reducing something to its fundamental elements. (Although Brust's usage is deliberately ironic, since the narrator is anything but terse.)

starwed
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I am currently infatuated with the word fettle.

fettle: v, trim or clean the rough edges of (a metal casting or a piece of pottery) before firing. (NOAD)

As the entry indicates, this applies specifically to sculpture but it can be easily applied to writing. What are you doing when you edit down a piece but trimming its excesses and cleaning the rough edges?

In full disclosure, I have never seen or heard anyone besides myself and those I have influenced to use fettle to refer to writing--I think I came across it in Cousin Bette as Balzac described Wenceslas's work process. Still, I often use it for writing. I do very little bronze casting (zero at time of writing) but I certainly write frequently. It would be such a shame to relegate such a fun word to such rare usage. I also am always a fan of a little metaphoric language.

Unrelated
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The missing piece with these answers is that they aren’t accounting for the qualitative connotation of “terse”—it implies tension between the speaker and audience, so it isn’t quite synonymous with words like “succinct.” I’d suggest something closer to “truncate” or “curtail”, but that might suggest a stopping point as opposed to a shortening. You might be looking for something more like “concise”, though, in which case I’d suggest “condense,” “abridge,” or “refine.” Hope that helps.

Liza
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