Concision is not the same as brevity. A short piece of writing can be wasteful with its words, and a long piece can be meaning-full right to the last sentence. Getting concise is about getting clear about meanings, not addressing the total word count. When you cut a sentence that does no work, or replace a five-word phrase with one word that carries the same message, you are being concise. But when you cut a qualification that actually matters because you are worried about word count, you are just being short. Not concise.

Let me try to explain the connection between word count and concision a little further. 

Concision operates inside whatever genre you are writing in. Genres (types of texts) make different demands. A journal article introduction needs to establish context, identify a gap, and announce the paper’s contribution  and it needs to do that efficiently, because the reader is making a fast decision about whether to keep reading. A thesis methodology chapter needs to show that you understand the reasoning behind your choices, which means tracing the connections between epistemological position, methodological approach, and specific methods. And a theoretical chapter may need to build a concept step by step, making each stage of the construction visible. These are different genres and thus different tasks, and they take different amounts of room.

A 500-word abstract and a 5,000-word chapter have different requirements as well as word counts. But within each of those genres, concision is still required. The thesis methodology chapter that takes 5,000 words to do its job should not be taking 7,000. The theoretical chapter that needs to elaborate should not be elaborating the same point in three consecutive paragraphs saying the same thing in different ways. Concision means getting rid of excess words not meanings.

And the places where excess words accumulate are predictable. Nominalisations are a common culprit: “make a contribution to” where “contribute to” would do, “conduct an investigation into” where “investigate” covers it. Throat-clearing openings are another: “It is important to note that”, “In order to understand this, it is first necessary to consider”. Stacked hedges produce a similar effect: “It could perhaps be argued that in some cases there may be a tendency for…”  Of course each of these has a legitimate origin. Nominalisations are useful when you need to treat a process as an object. Hedges are generally necessary but they can accumulate without the writer noticing, and the cumulative effect is writing that takes more room than the thought required.

The same goes for repetition. Now, elaboration is not the same as repetition. To elaborate is to develop an idea, add a dimension, complicate the initial framing. To repeat is to say the same thing again in different words, which is usually a sign that the writer wasn’t quite clear about what they needed to say the first time. The remedy for uncertainty is to work further on what you actually mean and say it clearly and elegantly once. There’s no point saying something three times in the hope that the accumulation creates confidence. (The exception may be in a more informal and/or pedagogical text such as this one where saying the same thing in different ways is about making an idea accessible to different readers.)

It can be easy for doctoral writers to assume that because their thesis is long, concision is not their problem. Alas. Concision is still their problem. Examiners read under the same constraints as any other reader  – they have limited time, attention and patience for excess. And excess in a long document is more wearing than excess in a short one, just because there is so much more of it. In a thesis, showing your reasoning and elaborating on ideas is important. The length is legitimate. Excess is not.

Getting concise means that you have to learn to read your own writing with critical impatience. This is particularly important when revising. Where do you feel the drag? Where does a sentence cover ground the previous sentence already covered? What is the sentence before your key claim actually doing? If the answer is “it goes beyond what’s needed”, it can go. And this applies whether you are writing 300 words or 30,000.

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