Deadwood is another word for "wordiness." And wordiness can be contagious. You may start your professional life with a natural, concise writing style, but after a while you may notice that other writers in your organization are incorporating inflated language, redundancies and long sentences into their documents. Before long "bureaucratese" and gobbledygook begin to sound natural. Your writing has now become infected. Remember wordiness and pomposity do not equal formality. And simple words do not equal simple ideas.
Clarity, conciseness and simplicity of word choice do make a difference, especially when the message is complex or the reader is uninformed. Conciseness does not necessarily mean brevity.
The following will help you avoid "deadwood."
- use complete instead of absolutely complete
- use planning instead of advance planning
- use ask instead of ask the question
- use assembled; gathered instead of assembled together
- use continue instead of continue on
- use cooperate instead of cooperate together
- use consensus; general opinion instead of consensus of opinion
- use each; every instead of each and every
- use Easter instead of Easter Sunday
- use identical instead of exactly identical
- use rabbi instead of Jewish rabbi
- use experience instead of past experience
- use shrugging instead of shrugging her shoulders
- use because instead of the reason is because