An engineer working on a construction
project for a private
architectural-engineering firm wrote this 23-word sentence
in his first draft:
The reason that the decision was made by XYZ for the suspension of the Main Street Expansion had to do with safety concerns.
After I told the engineer that the sentence was wordy, he edited it to
a 16-word second draft:
The reason that XYZ made the decision to suspend the Main Street Expansion was safety concerns.
He surely improved the sentence to a more concise version
by eliminating verbiage caused by the passive verb (was made), the double prepositional phrase (for the suspension of the construction project), and the colloquialism
(had to do with).
But by being true to his original sentence syntax (word order),
he missed a key point, which would have made his sentence even more concise—and
far more powerful. I told him to forget about his command of language and to
look for the most important point of his edited version. He chose the words suspend and safety. Since his client was a municipal agency, I asked him what
he thought the agency would see as the most important word.
“Safety,” he answered.
“Then start there,” I said. After some reflection, he rewrote
the sentence:
Safety concerns compelled XYZ to suspend the Main Street Expansion.
The third draft is now a more power-packed 10 words. What
happened? Draft 2 still spends 7 words drawing attention to the decision-making
process rather than the issue of common concern. By beginning the third draft
with safety, Ben had to think about a
more energetic verb. The extra time he took led to a worthwhile result.
When reviewing overlong sentences, forget about all the
rules of syntax and diction; just start with the most important point. This
practice will go a long way toward making your writing more powerful.
