Everybody Writes, 2nd Edition

41“Mistakes Were Made.” Avoiding These Simple Mistakes Will Make You Look and Feel Smarter Instantly

I've been editing the writing of marketing and PR professionals and other business executives for more than two decades. I just did the math. At a conservative rate of an article a day … that's close to 5,000 (!) articles.

All that editing has helped me develop my Spidey senses about common writing problems that plague us all. Too often we sacrifice clarity on the altar of sounding “professional.” And the next thing you know, wordiness, conformity, clichés, take a running start.… All the things we've talked about so far all pile into the canoe and swamp our writing completely.

A while ago, I began keeping a list of the more common mistakes. Here are the top 18 followed by their anti-wordiness, anti-fuzzy-thinking, pro-brevity, pro-clarity equivalents.

Swap the word(s) on the right for those on the left and you'll feel instantly smarter and more succinct:

1. Ways by which > Ways
2. Continues to be > Remains
3. In order to > To (especially at the beginning of a sentence)
4. There (are) will be times when > Sometimes, At times
5. Despite the fact that > Although, Though
6. At which time > When
7. In spite of > Despite
8. When it comes to > In, When
9. The majority of > Most
10. A number of > Some, Few, Several, Many, Various (or often you don't need to use any word at all)
11. When asked > Asked
12. Leverage (as verb) > Use (or Put to use), Harness, Apply
13. The same level of > As much
14. While (if not being used to mean ...