Sentence: SOME OF THE PARTICIPANTS had not discussed their experiences with non-family members.
Edited Sentence: SOME PARTICIPANTS had not discussed their experiences with non-family members.
Explanation: Many scholars want to ensure their writing is direct and clear; conciseness helps to achieve this goal. Conciseness can be accomplished in numerous ways. One way is to eliminate small extraneous words and unnecessary phrases.
In the sample sentence above, the words “of the” are placed between the subject of the sentence (participants) and its adjective (some). While nothing is wrong with stating “some of the participants,” the phrase can be expressed in fewer words, Therefore, in the edited sentence, the words “of the” are removed.
This small deletion achieves conciseness while maintaining the clear subject of the sentence! When editing your documents, look for ways to delete extra words that do not add anything to the ideas expressed in your sentences.
Until next week, Happy Writing!!! Dr. V Writing Coach-Editor-Speaker Author of I'm Not a Writer...I am Just in Graduate School (order your copy at https://www.amazon.com/Not-Writer-Just-Graduate-School/dp/1533392919)
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