The reader is more likely to understand a sentence when:

In other words, it is easier to understand a sentence where we can quickly identify the actor, the action that the actor carries out, and the consequences of this action.

Let us analyze a first example:

Are you able to understand this sentence quickly and effortlessly upon your first reading?

In this sentence, the subject is the abstraction “The selection of the studied methods”. The subject is followed by the verb “tries to cover”, whose meaning can vary, introducing some ambiguity.

We can reformulate this sentence by making the subjects explicit as follows:

In this sentence, one can easily identify the subjects and their actions. Thus, we see that:

Comparing the two sentences, we observe that the first one uses abstract nouns and adjectives to express actions (“selection” and “studied”) whereas the second one uses verbs to express actions (“we studied …”, “we could cover …”, and “patterns that are derived …”). The first sentence follows neither principle 1 nor principle 2 given above, whereas the second sentence adheres to both principles.

Let us analyze a second example:

Are you able to understand this sentence quickly and effortlessly upon your first reading?

Similarly to the first example, the subject in this sentence is the abstraction “Our lack of knowledge about local conditions”. The subject is followed by the verb “precluded”, whose usage introduces ambiguity.

We can rewrite this sentence using explicit subjects as follows:

In this sentence, it is easy to see that:

Comparing the two sentences of this second example, we observe that the first one uses abstract nouns to express actions (“lack”, “knowledge”, “determination”, “action”, “allocation”, “assistance”, and “need”). Elle ne respecte aucun des deux principes 1 et 2. It does not follow principle 1 nor principle 2. The second sentence uses verbs to express actions (“we knew nothing”, “we could not determine”, “the committee allocated”, and “areas needed”) and follows both principles 1 and 2.

In the two examples analyzed above, the sentences that follow principles 1 and 2 are easier to understand. Generally, applying those principles leads to clearer, more concrete and shorter sentences. The flow of ideas is also easier to build and follow.

Let us consider another example:

We can rewrite this sentence and make it more concrete by applying principles 1 and 2:

Let us consider one last example:

The distance between the subject “Approaches” and the verb “have been proposed” is too large. If we applied principle 3 by reducing this distance, we would get a sentence that is easier to read and understand:

Principle 3 is a particular case of the general principle stating that related words should be kept close to one another. The position of words in a sentence shows the relationships between them and reflects their relationship to the thought that we want to express. Words that are related to the same idea should be kept together whereas those that are related to different ideas should be separated.

In a sentence that uses active voice, the subject performs the action expressed by the verb. In a sentence that uses passive voice, the subject undergoes the action expressed by the verb.

Let us consider the two following examples:

Active voice:

Passive voice:

Comparing these two sentences, we can see that the second one is longer, less direct and more imprecise (i.e. we don’t know who performed the experiments) than the first sentence. Generally, active voice is more direct, more concise and more vigorous than passive voice. The flow of ideas is also easier to follow with active voice.

Compare the two following paragraphs:

Passive voice:

Active voice:

The first paragraph uses passive voice in all sentences, whereas the second paragraph uses active voice. Although it is longer, the second paragraph is easier to understand because it is direct and concrete; we better understand who is the actor and what their action is in each sentence.

This does not mean that passive voice should be banished from your work. Passive voice is often appropriate, or necessary, depending on context, to create a subject out of a particular word. This is the case when one wants to emphasize a word or expression that is not necessarily and actor in the sentence, or when passive voice ensures better flow.

Let us compare the following two sentences:

Passive voice:

Active voice:

If the topic of your paragraph or section is asthma, the first sentence would be appropriate since it emphasizes this topic as a subject. The second sentence would be appropriate if your paragraph or section focused on ozone.

We often use passive voice when we don’t know who the actor is who is performing a given action, or when we do not want to specify it. The following sentence illustrates this:

Avoid successions of passive expressions such as:

This sentence can be simplified in the following manner:

Or:

A common error related to the use of passive voice is to choose for the subject a noun that completely describes the action; the verb then has no other function than to complete the sentence. Consider the following two examples:

These two sentences can be reformulated as follows:

Or by using active voice as follows:

In addition to managing the flow and cohesiveness of the ideas in your paper, as discussed later in the “Cohesiveness” section, you must express them concisely and precisely.

Let us analyze the following sentence:

The word “personal” can be omitted since an opinion is always personal. This is redundant! We can even omit the entire expression “In our personal opinion” because the following declaration is, implicitly, the author’s opinion. Therefore, the reader can infer that it is the authors’ opinion that is expressed by “we must consider and evaluate each and every language that supports formal modeling. “

The expression “consider and evaluate”, more simply, means “study”. The expression “each and every” is a redundant pair of words; we only need one of them. Redundant pairs often come from English words borrowed from Latin or French. Because the borrowed words sounded more knowledgeable that the equivalent English words, some authors made it a habit to use them together. This tradition introduces redundancy in the text. Here are some common examples of redundant pairs:

Thus, our edited sentence becomes:

You should also avoid writing long sentences with words that are not necessary to understand your ideas. Let us consider the following sentence:

This sentence can be simplified by removing “basically” and “practically” which do not add essential information to the expressed idea:

Indeed, some adverbs that are commonly used in oral communication do not add useful information to an idea. A few examples of such adverbs include:

One should also avoid redundancies due to the use of modifiers (i.e. adverbs, adjectives, or any expression aiming to add information to a word) whose meaning is already part of the meaning of the word to which the modifier is linked. The expression “completely finish” is an example of such a redundancy since “finish” implies “completely”. Other examples of this type include:

In these cases, the modifier (adverb or adjective) should be removed to eliminate the redundancy.

Let us consider another type of redundancy illustrated by the following sentence:

In this sentence, certain specific words are used, as well as their more general categories: “time” is a “period”, the “membrane” is an “area”, “pink” is a “color” and “shiny” is an “appearance”. Thus, we can reformulate the sentence to eliminate categorical redundancy by keeping only the most specific words as follows:

In certain cases, the general category can be suppressed by replacing an adjective with an adverb:

Adjective:

Adverb:

Or by transforming an adjective into a noun and by suppressing the name of the general category:

With general category name:

Without general category name:

In all cases, we suppress the more general word and keep the more specific one.

Finally, to write concisely, you must elaborate the important ideas of your manuscript, providing all the details required for understanding them while avoiding useless details. In most cases, the target reader is an informed reader with some knowledge of your field.

In addition to being concise, your sentences should be precise. The reader needs to know what the facts are and what their direct and indirect consequences are. You must therefore avoid using ambiguous, negative or evasive expressions. The reader feels frustrated when facing evasiveness or ambiguity.

Hence, instead of:

Write:

Consider the following sentence, expressed in negative form:

In fact, this sentence includes two negations (“was not” and “unsatisfying”). The two negations cancel out to bring positive meaning to the sentence, but this meaning is ambiguous: it could be that “the efficiency of the approach was satisfying”, but it is not obviously so. Additional information is required to understand precisely what this sentence expresses.

Negation should be used to reject a fact. It should never be used to distort or avoid a fact.

Many negative expressions can be written affirmatively:

To summarize, here are the principles to apply in order to keep your text concise and precise:

An article addresses a particular problem or topic. To achieve this, the article is split into sections, each aiming to present one aspect of the general topic (see the writing guide to know what parts make up an article). Each section is divided into paragraphs, whose numbers vary according to section and article length.

To help the reader, the aspect addressed in one section is divided into several themes (sometimes corresponding to steps), and each theme is presented in a paragraph. The paragraph is the fundamental composition unit in English and several other languages. With the beginning of a new paragraph, the reader understands that a new step in the development of the topic is being addressed.

Paragraphs are composed of several sentences that are related to a single theme. Your readers must be able to identify the theme of a paragraph as soon as they start reading it, and must keep this theme in their mind until the end of the paragraph. To achieve this, a paragraph must contain:

Let us consider the following paragraph:

This paragraph is composed of six sentences. The introductive sentence and the final sentence were highlighted in this paragraph. Sentence introduces the theme of the paragraph; that is, “the appearance of a different conception of history in the 18th century”. This new conception of history is defined more clearly in sentence , using examples in sentence , and by contrast in sentence . Sentence complements the definition with a new element. Finally, sentence , which is the final sentence, presents the consequence of this new conception.

To ensure a coherent and continuous flow of information, it is often necessary to explicitly express the relationship between a paragraph and its predecessor. This can be done with one word (or expression). The word or expression to use depends on the nature of the relationship between the paragraphs: addition, contrast, illustration, consequence, etc. Here are a few examples of transition words used to establish this type of linkage:

When the relationship between a paragraph and its predecessor requires several sentences, one can infer that there is a gap between the steps/themes addressed in the two paragraphs. In this case, it is often more appropriate to insert an additional paragraph that creates the relationship between the first two.

In the Clarity section, we focused on the clarity of individual sentences. However, a series of clear sentences can induce confusion if the sentences are not built as a function of their context. Thus, sentences must be built such as to ensure their “local” clarity (i.e. as individual sentences) but also such as to reflect a coherent point of view when grouped together as a whole.

Consider the two following sentences:

Sentence (a):

Sentence (b):

The two sentences express the same idea, using passive voice in the first (a) and active voice in the second (b). Which of the two sentences should one use if the context is the following paragraph:

We can see that the passive form used in sentence (a) is more appropriate in this context that the active form in (b). Indeed, the last part of sentence presents one of the important actors, “black holes in space”. If we write using the active form given in (b), the beginning of the sentence would introduce elements that are new to the reader (i.e. “The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble”) and whose relationship with sentence is not clear. The main actor “black hole” already introduced in sentence only re-appears at the end of sentence . Therefore, the flow is somewhat broken. We can improve the flow between sentences and by putting the known “black hole” actor at the beginning of sentence (2), where it will echo the last words of sentence (1). For this reason, we will use a passive form like the one in (a) whose subject is “black hole”. By doing this, we also move the idea that “the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble” to the end of sentence , where it will immediately be echoed by the beginning of sentence (i.e., “So much matter compressed into so little volume”).

By creating a conceptual relationship between your sentences, your discourse flows better and becomes easier to follow and understand for the reader. To create this relationship, you must build each sentence by applying two cohesiveness principles that were illustrated by the preceding example:

Transition words (see the previous section for examples) can also help you make the conceptual relationship between sentences more explicit and easy to understand.