English makes it easy to say nothing in many words. Most wordy writing isn't a style failure — it's the same few dozen phrases showing up again and again, because formal situations teach us that more words sound more serious. They don't. This reference collects the most common offenders: the phrases that account for the bulk of the fat in most drafts, organized wordy to tight, so you can run a find-and-destroy pass over any text.
Why wordiness happens
First drafts are for ideas, and ideas arrive wrapped in verbal packing foam. That's fine — the problem is that most people edit for correctness (spelling, commas) but never for compression, so the foam ships. Wordiness concentrates in three places: openings (announcing what you're about to say instead of saying it), verbs (turning one action into a noun phrase plus a filler verb), and connectors (stretching one logical link across five words). The tables below attack exactly those three zones, in that order of payoff. For the full editing workflow around this list — what to cut first, what never to cut — see how to cut your word count.
Redundant pairs and duplicated meanings
The cheapest cuts in the language: phrases where both halves mean the same thing, so one can simply go.
| Wordy | Tight |
|---|---|
| "each and every" | "every" |
| "any and all" | "all" |
| "first and foremost" | "first" |
| "null and void" | "void" |
| "true facts" | "facts" |
| "free gift" | "gift" |
| "past history" | "history" |
| "advance planning" | "planning" |
| "end result" | "result" |
| "final outcome" | "outcome" |
| "unexpected surprise" | "surprise" |
| "basic fundamentals" | "fundamentals" |
| "completely eliminate" | "eliminate" |
| "totally destroyed" | "destroyed" |
| "close proximity" | "proximity" |
| "cooperate together" | "cooperate" |
| "join together" | "join" |
| "merge together" | "merge" |
| "repeat again" | "repeat" |
| "return back" | "return" |
| "revert back" | "revert" |
| "new innovation" | "innovation" |
| "added bonus" | "bonus" |
| "future plans" | "plans" |
| "brief summary" | "summary" |
| "very unique" | "unique" |
| "absolutely essential" | "essential" |
| "plan ahead" | "plan" |
| "ask a question" | "ask" |
| "nodded his head" | "nodded" |
Filler openers
Openings that announce words instead of delivering them. Deleting these rarely changes a single meaning — "(delete)" means exactly that: remove the phrase and start at the real subject.
| Wordy | Tight |
|---|---|
| "It is important to note that" | (delete) |
| "It should be noted that" | (delete) |
| "It is worth mentioning that" | (delete) |
| "It goes without saying that" | (delete) |
| "I would like to point out that" | (delete) |
| "The point I am trying to make is" | (delete) |
| "In my personal opinion" | "I think" |
| "As a matter of fact" | "in fact" |
| "The fact of the matter is" | "in fact" |
| "Needless to say" | (delete) |
| "For all intents and purposes" | "essentially" |
| "At the end of the day" | "ultimately" |
| "When all is said and done" | "ultimately" |
| "What I mean to say is" | (delete) |
| "As previously mentioned" | (delete) |
| "Let me start by saying" | (delete) |
| "Basically" | (delete) |
| "Essentially" | (delete) |
| "In today's society" | "today" |
| "In this day and age" | "today" |
| "There are many writers who" | "many writers" |
| "This is a subject that" | "this subject" |
| "One of the most important things to remember is that" | (delete) |
| "It is often the case that" | "often" |
Wordy verbs (nominalizations)
The biggest single source of bloat in business and academic prose: hiding a perfectly good verb inside a noun and hiring a weak verb to carry it. "Make a decision" is "decide" wearing a trench coat.
| Wordy | Tight |
|---|---|
| "make a decision" | "decide" |
| "conduct an investigation" | "investigate" |
| "make an assumption" | "assume" |
| "reach a conclusion" | "conclude" |
| "make a recommendation" | "recommend" |
| "give consideration to" | "consider" |
| "take into consideration" | "consider" |
| "make an adjustment" | "adjust" |
| "perform an analysis" | "analyze" |
| "make an announcement" | "announce" |
| "hold a discussion" | "discuss" |
| "make a suggestion" | "suggest" |
| "provide assistance" | "help" |
| "give a description of" | "describe" |
| "make a modification" | "modify" |
| "carry out an evaluation" | "evaluate" |
| "make a purchase" | "buy" |
| "is in agreement" | "agrees" |
| "has the ability to" | "can" |
| "make reference to" | "refer to" |
| "take action" | "act" |
| "make an improvement" | "improve" |
| "conduct a review" | "review" |
| "make a request" | "request" |
| "made a discovery" | "discovered" |
| "conducted a study" | "studied" |
| "came to the realization" | "realized" |
| "made an attempt" | "tried" |
| "enter into an agreement" | "agree" |
| "is of the opinion that" | "thinks" |
Wordy connectors, time and quantity phrases
One logical link stretched across four or five words. These are the phrases that make sentences feel longer than they are — swapping them out is where tightening turns noticeable.
| Wordy | Tight |
|---|---|
| "due to the fact that" | "because" |
| "for the reason that" | "because" |
| "on the grounds that" | "because" |
| "the reason why is that" | "because" |
| "in order to" | "to" |
| "for the purpose of" | "to" |
| "in the event that" | "if" |
| "in spite of the fact that" | "although" |
| "despite the fact that" | "although" |
| "during the course of" | "during" |
| "in the near future" | "soon" |
| "at this point in time" | "now" |
| "at the present time" | "now" |
| "at that point in time" | "then" |
| "until such time as" | "until" |
| "subsequent to" | "after" |
| "prior to" | "before" |
| "in the absence of" | "without" |
| "by means of" | "by" |
| "through the use of" | "by using" |
| "with the exception of" | "except" |
| "in the vicinity of" | "near" |
| "in close proximity to" | "near" |
| "a large number of" | "many" |
| "a small number of" | "a few" |
| "a majority of" | "most" |
| "the vast majority of" | "most" |
| "a sufficient number of" | "enough" |
| "on a daily basis" | "daily" |
| "on a regular basis" | "regularly" |
| "in a timely manner" | "promptly" |
| "in a quick manner" | "quickly" |
| "in an efficient manner" | "efficiently" |
| "at all times" | "always" |
| "in some instances" | "sometimes" |
| "in many cases" | "often" |
| "in the majority of cases" | "usually" |
| "as per" | "per" |
| "in reference to" | "about" |
| "with regard to" | "about" |
| "in terms of" | "about" |
Before and after: what the cuts add up to
Lists are easy; sentences are where it counts. Here's a memo paragraph built almost entirely from the tables above — 97 words:
In my personal opinion, it is important to note that the vast majority of customers who made the decision to cancel their subscriptions did so due to the fact that they were of the opinion that the pricing was unfair, in spite of the fact that we had made reductions in the month of April. For this reason, we need to conduct an investigation into this matter in the near future in order to gain an understanding of the reasons why customers have come to the conclusion that our prices are unfair at this point in time.
And the same content at 46 words:
Most customers who cancelled believed our pricing was unfair, even after we cut prices in April. Before the next pricing review, we should investigate that belief: which competitors they compare us with, what they expected to pay, and where the gap between the two is widest.
More than half the words gone, zero information lost — and the tightened version is easier to act on, because the surviving words are the ones carrying meaning. The cumulative arithmetic matters too: ten cuts averaging four words each save 40 words a page, which is the difference between a 540-word essay and a 500-word limit, or three full pages in a 25-page report. To see your own number fall in real time, paste your draft into the WordlyCount counter before and after the purge. And note that wordiness is only one of the silent draft-killers — punctuation faults like the comma splice love hiding in the same sentences that carry filler.