Editing, Succinctness, and Dealing with Jargon/Introduction

Introduction

It is always important to write things as succinctly as possible when communicating science. You will find that you can eliminate unnecessary words from your sentences when editing initial drafts, and this is one way of making sure you are writing succinctly. On this page, you can find tips for shortening sentences, as well as advice for dealing with the jargon that you will certainly have to deal with in your writing.

When editing your work, you will often find that you can make things more concise just by writing in the active voice (rather than the passive). For more information on this, see the ‘Active vs. Passive’ page on our site. It is also important to use simple words, and to remove ambiguous/confusing words from your writing when editing. For advice on this, see the ‘Clarity – Using Simple Language’ page on our site.