Single English Word for "to make more concise"?

Question

I'm writing a review of Richard Lanham's Revising Prose.

Revising Prose provides detailed examples and tutorials that will help you clarify, simplify, and make your writing more concise.

What word can I use to replace "make your writing more concise"?

This is not an appropriate question for this site. Please try English SE. — Weckar E., Jan 10 '20 at 05:02
@WeckarE. I've updated my question to point readers to English Language & Usage. How do I close this interchange in the same way as https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/24031/a-single-english-word-for-not-chaos? — Ryan Payne, Jan 10 '20 at 16:59
@RyanBrookePayne Once five people vote to migrate this question to English.SE, it'll be automatically moved there, and I assume the users there will swiftly close it as a duplicate of one of the questions you mentioned. My vote makes three, so we just need two more. — F1Krazy, Jan 10 '20 at 17:05
Does this answer your question? Good verb for "to make more concise"? — Edwin Ashworth, Jan 10 '20 at 19:40
@EdwinAshworth Yes, feel free to mark this as a duplicate. I mistakenly posted it first in Writing Stack Exchange and then it was migrated here. — Ryan Payne, Jan 10 '20 at 22:28
Does this answer your question? "To make terse" (an insufficiently prolix title) — Ryan Payne, Jan 31 '20 at 18:42

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 09 '20 at 19:09

4

Try "Revising Prose provides examples and tutorials that will clarify your writing." I also like the verbs tune up and sharpen.

There is a bit more tightening that could be done: "Using examples and tutorials, Revising Prose will clarify your writing." Or you could break it up something like this: "Revising Prose will clarify your writing. Using examples and prose, . . ."

answered Jan 09 '20 at 19:09

Thom Chittom

95

I used your second suggestion: https://medium.com/docsfordevs/technical-writing-resources-for-software-developers-ada066af1bbc – Ryan Payne Jan 09 '20 at 19:59
3

You're using the word tightening, but you're not suggesting it. What's wrong with clarify, simplify, and tighten your writing? – Peter Shor Jan 10 '20 at 18:47
@PeterShor That's a great suggestion. I've updated my blog post: https://medium.com/docsfordevs/technical-writing-resources-for-software-developers-ada066af1bbc. – Ryan Payne Jan 10 '20 at 22:27
Revising might well include expounding for clarity. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 31 '20 at 19:39

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 10 '20 at 09:16

2

You could try “... and shorten your writing.”

answered Jan 10 '20 at 09:16

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 10 '20 at 13:45

Sometimes, I find that when the end of one of my sentences is too long, the whole sentence should be tightened. I like to think of my text as a tweet that must convey everything with no characters wasted.

Thus, in your case, I came up with:

Revising Prose explores how to write clearer and concise writing.

I took out "simpler" as I felt that was implied.

Then I considered that "explores how to" has a single word replacement:

Revising Prose demonstrates writing clearer, concise writing.

Which it should not take a genius to realise is a horrible sentence with needless repetition. Thus I went further:

Revising Prose examines concise and clearer writing.

19 words reduced to 7.

If this was me, I would now move on to talking about the tutorials.

You don't "write writing". You write prose. – Peter Shor Jan 10 '20 at 18:44 — Peter Shor, Jan 10 '20 at 18:44
@Peter Shor Isn't that a quote from Popeye? – Edwin Ashworth Jan 10 '20 at 19:41 — Edwin Ashworth, Jan 10 '20 at 19:41

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 09 '20 at 23:38

One can (sometimes) resort to a neologism that relies on established meaning:

Revising Prose provides detailed examples and tutorials that will help you clarify, simplify, and 'compact-ify' your writing.

OR Revising Prose provides detailed examples and tutorials that will help you clarify, simplify and [consolidate] your writing, into its most effective essence.

OR Revising Prose provides detailed examples and tutorials that will help you clarify, simplify, and [concentrate] your writing into its most effective essence.

Single English Word for "to make more concise"?

4 Answers4