Fundamentals of Business Writing

8Step IV: Revise Your Writing: Streamline Sentences

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Divide long sentences.

• Use transition words appropriately.

• Identify and delete meaningless intensifiers, filler phrases, long-winded expressions, and redundancies.

• Decide whether to delete jargon, relative pronouns, and auxiliary verbs.

“Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.”

—Alexander Pope

OLD ATTITUDE

Use words to impress, not express. The longer the sentence or the word, the better. Length reflects knowledge and sophistication.

NEW ATTITUDE

Use words to ...