CH 8 Exercise: Clarity & Conciseness
Review sections 8.1 “Communicating with Precision” and 8.2 “Conciseness” and then revise the five sentences below to be clearer and more concise. Be sure to preserve the original meaning of each sentence, but you should eliminate any unnecessary words, phrases, or clauses—you may also rephrase the sentence for clarity if needed and/or rearrange the order of information to serve a rhetorical purpose or prevent confusion.
Here’s an example:
Original: For all intents and purposes, our company’s committee on health and safety has essentially decided that because we had two accidents last month, all employees are required to, whether they want to or not, participate in several new safety trainings that hopefully will help to prevent any future accidents from happening in our workplace again.
Revision 1: The Health and Safety Committee is requiring all employees to participate in several new safety trainings in hopes of preventing accidents like the two we had last month.
(In this revision, the writer has eliminated several unnecessary words and phrases for clarity. Note that main point comes first, followed by the reason.)
Revision 2: To prevent future accidents like the two we had last year, the Health and Safety Committee is requiring all employees to participate in several new safety trainings.
(In this revision, the writer has eliminated several unnecessary words and phrases like the first revision, but they have also rearranged the order of information so that the reason comes before the main point, which may be more rhetorically effective depending on the audience and their anticipated reaction.)
Revise the following sentences for clarity and conciseness:
1. I am in receipt of your memo requesting an increase in pay and am of the opinion that it is not merited at this time due to the fact that you have worked here for only one month.
2. We hope to convey the following to our employees: a familiarization with the company’s policies, teaching about procedures, and to know what they should do to file complaints if they have any.
3. It is expected that the new schedule will be likely announced by the company within the next day.
4. In this meeting, our intention is to acquire a familiarization with this equipment so that we might standardize the replacement of obsolete machinery throughout our entire work environment.
5. In lieu of further discussion, we want to state in the affirmative that what transpired was due to the fact that the vehicle had insufficient braking capabilities to avoid the collision.
