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In common usage and linguistics, concision (also called conciseness, succinctness, (2026). 9781604424454, American Bar Association. ISBN 9781604424454 terseness, brevity, or laconicism) is a communication principle of eliminating redundancy,UNT Writing Lab. "Concision, Clarity, and Cohesion." Accessed June 19, 2012. Link. generally achieved by using as few as possible in a sentence while preserving its semantics. More generally, it is achieved through the omission of parts that impart information that was already given, that is obvious or that is irrelevant. Outside of linguistics, a message may be similarly "dense" in other forms of communication.
For example, a sentence of "It is a fact that most arguments must try to convince readers, that is the audience, that the arguments are true." may be expressed more concisely as "Most arguments must demonstrate their truth to readers." the observations that the statement is a fact and that readers are its audience are redundant, and it is unnecessary to repeat the word "arguments" in the sentence.Program for Writing and Rhetoric, University of Colorado at Boulder. "Writing Tip #27: Revising for Concision and Clarity." Accessed June 19, 2012. Link. ""It is a fact that most arguments must try to convince readers, that is the audience, that the arguments are true." Notice the beginning of the sentence: "it is a fact that" doesn't say much; if something is a fact, just present it. So begin the sentence with "most arguments..." and turn to the next bit of overlap. Look at "readers, that is the audience"; the redundancy can be reduced to "readers" or "audience." Now we have "Most arguments must try to convince readers that the arguments are true." Let's get rid of one of the "arguments" to produce "Most arguments must demonstrate (their) truth to readers," or a similarly straightforward expression."
"Laconic" speech or writing refers to the pithy bluntness that the people of ancient Greece were reputedly known for.Leslie Kurke, Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose, Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 131–2, 135.
In linguistic research, there have been approaches to analyze the level of succinctness of texts using
Mark Twain, in a criticism of James Fenimore Cooper, stated, "Eschew surplusage."
William Strunk and E. B. White's The Elements of Style, an American English style guide, advises:
Joseph M. Williams's suggests six principles for concision:
Concision is taught to students at all levels.Sandy Buczynski, Kristin Fontichiaro, Story Starters and Science Notebooking: Developing Student Thinking Through Literacy and Inquiry (2009), p. 7, .Patrick Dunleavy, Authoring a PhD: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Thesis or Dissertation (2003), p. 273, .Legal Writing Institute, Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute (2002), Vol. 7, p. 32. It is valued highly in expository English writing, but less by some other cultures.Mark Newell Brock, Larry Walters, Teaching Composition Around the Pacific Rim: Politics and Pedagogy (1992), p. 4-5, . "in expository prose English places a high value on conciseness... the value placed on conciseness... is not shared by all cultures"
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