By Laura Poole

I’ve been copyediting scholarly nonfiction for many years now, and I have some gentle suggestions to academic writers who would like to tighten up their prose.

These are all suggestions at the phrase level, not the sentence level, to reduce wordiness, impose active voice, and improve flow. There are NOT hard-and-fast rules and should not be done as a knee-jerk reflex. There are times when these suggested edits won’t work or will change the meaning of the phrase; in these cases, don’t do them!

Here are 5 to start with.

• Search for “within” and change to “in” in ~95% of cases
• Search for “in order to” and change to “to” in ~98% of cases
• Search for “not only/but also” construction and change 2/3 of them to “and” (this construction is useful, but is overused and loses its impact . Limit to once in a paragraph)
• Search for “however” “therefore” “moreover” “thus” and remove about 3/4 of them (you don’t need nearly as many connecting words as you think you do, and often the context is clear)
• Look for “of” constructions that can be changed to possessives: “The theory of Freud” becomes “Freud’s theory”

A few more gentle suggestions for tightening up academic writing at the phrase level. Remember: These are not hard-and-fast rules and won’t work in every situation! Use your own judgment.

• Change “is dependent on” to “depends on” wherever possible (active verbs, yay!)
• Search for “subsequent” “following” “in the aftermath of” and change to “after”
• Search for “prior to” “preceding” and “leading up to” and change to “before”
• Search for “way(s) in which” and change to “way(s)” or “how”
• Search for “individual” and change to “person”/“individuals” to “people”

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Laura Poole is the owner of Archer Editorial Services and has been a professional copyeditor for more than 25 years. She specializes in scholarly nonfiction in the humanities. Visit her on LinkedIn.