Day 46: Use a single adjective or adverb to replace a descriptive phrase.

Take a close look at your sentences and underline or circle the descriptive phrases. If you have 2 or more in a row, this tip is for you. Consider this sentence.

“An organization providing healthcare services to those patients unable to pay for services necessary to sustain an active lifestyle will encounter financial difficulties should the recipients increase in number.”

This sentence has 5 descriptive phrases, and 4 of these are in a series:

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“providing healthcare services” – describes “organization”

“to those patients” – describes “providing”

“unable to pay for services” – describes “patients”

“necessary to sustain” – describes “services”

In this sentence, the writer provides one descriptive phrase, describes a word in that phrase, and so forth, producing cumbersome writing. This string of descriptive phrases also separates the rhetorical subject (“organization”) and the main action (“will encounter”). As a result, the reader may lose the writer’s meaning.

Because clarity depends, in great part, on concision, avoid strings of descriptive phrases. One simple way to do this is to use a single word or two to replace an entire descriptive phrase.

For example, instead of writing “The organization providing healthcare services,” you could write “The healthcare organization.” Also, you can replace the string of descriptive phrases “providing healthcare services to those patients unable to pay for services” with “providing charity services.”

This sentence could be improved further, but with just these 2 changes, the entire sentence is more clear and more economical:

“A healthcare organization providing charity services will encounter financial difficulties should the recipients increase.”