Cut the Fluff: A Practical Guide to Trimming Wordiness in Persian Prose
“I repeat again”; “together with each other”; “please, I beg you”; “absolute silence.” We hear and read these combinations every day, and they have become so ordinary that they no longer catch the eye. But these small linguistic habits, when they pile up in a multi-page article or a chapter of a book, make the prose slow and lifeless. A large part of an editor’s work is not writing; it is deleting.
Truthfully, redundancy is not merely a grammatical error; it is a sign of the writer’s anxiety: the fear that the reader might not get the point. In this piece, we will look at how many faces redundancy has, where it has found its way into our contemporary prose, and with what exercises we can make sentences lean and precise.
What Is Redundancy and How Many Faces Does It Have?
Redundancy is the use of a word or phrase that adds no new meaning to the sentence. In classical Persian rhetoric, this fault was called “tedious verbosity,” and set against it was “acceptable verbosity”: if speech grows longer and serves a purpose, it is acceptable; if it merely fills air, it is a blight. In practice, redundancy appears mostly in four forms:
- Absolute redundancy: two words appear and yield one meaning; such as “repeat again,” “final result,” “first time.”
- Structural redundancy: the most hidden type; “undertook to write” instead of “wrote,” “was subjected to review” instead of “was reviewed.”
- Tedious verbosity: sentences that circle within themselves several times before reaching the point; “considering that at the present time…”
- Colloquial redundancy: “I mean,” “you know,” “really,” “so to speak.” They are natural in speech, enervating in writing.
The problem is that most of these do not catch the eye. We do not see the intensifying adjective, we do not see the auxiliary verb; we only feel that the sentence is heavy and does not move forward.
Why Does Our Prose Become Redundant?
One reason is historical: bureaucratic prose. “Hereby informs [you] that…” has a ritual function; it shows that the writer is speaking within the framework of an official institution. As long as it is an official letter, there is no problem, but when the same pattern spreads to articles and everyday notes, only ceremony remains, with no function at all.
The second reason is translation. A translator who transcribes the structure of the source language creates things in Persian such as “the fact that,” “in order that,” and “in fact.” Landmark contemporary translations passed through this very point: Mohammad Qazi, Najaf Daryabandari, and Abolhassan Najafi first understood the meaning and then rebuilt the sentence anew with Persian syntax, rather than merely moving words around.
The third reason is psychological. The writer is afraid the meaning will be lost, so he says it two or three times, unaware that every extra repetition reduces the weight of the message.
From Redundancy to Conciseness: A Comparison Table
Keep this table at hand, and before publication, search for each phrase in the text and find its instances:
| Redundant Phrase | Concise Equivalent | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| repeated again | repeated | “Repeat” itself means a second time or more |
| first time | the first time / initial time | “First” means initial |
| together with each other | together | two words with one meaning |
| considering that | because / since | heavy structure, simple meaning |
| at the present time | now | three words for one adverb |
| undertook to write | wrote | the main verb is hidden in an infinitive |
| was subjected to review | was reviewed | complex and colorless passivization |
| absolute silence / completely complete | silence / complete | the intensifying adjective does not shift the meaning |
| for free | free | redundant preposition |
| ultimately in the end | in the end | two adverbs for one point |
The common point of all rows is one: none of them are grammatical errors. Redundancy is not a syntax error; it is an error of economy; waste in words.
Six Exercises for Trimming Prose
- Read it aloud. Where you run out of breath or your tone falters, an unnecessary phrase usually sits.
- Delete every adjective and read it again. If the meaning doesn't change, that adjective wasn't doing its job.
- Free the verb. Wherever you see “carry out,” “take place,” and “put into practice,” free the buried verb: “A review was conducted” becomes “it was reviewed.”
- Cross out intensifying adverbs. “Very extraordinary,” “very unique,” “absolutely certain”; intensifier piled on intensifier pushes the tone toward advertising, not precise writing.
- Write the shorter equivalent. “For this reason” → “so,” “in the event that” → “if,” “for the reason that” → “because.”
- Read the paragraph in isolation. If it makes sense independently of the other paragraphs, it probably has a few extra sentences; a good paragraph often comes down to two-thirds of its original length.
So Should We Always Write Briefly?
No. If concision leads to ambiguity or dryness, it is itself a flaw, and in Persian rhetoric it has a name: ijaz-e mokhel, or harmful brevity. Intentional repetition has a function in literature; radif and tarji'band in poetry, parallel sentences in oratory, and structural repetition in children’s literature are engines of learning. Even “please” and “thank you” are more a ritual of politeness than a transfer of meaning. The criterion is always the same: Is this word doing work? If yes, let it stay; if not, let it go.
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should have no unnecessary words, and a paragraph no unnecessary sentences; just as a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” — William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style
Concision: A Skill Built by Deletion
You break wordiness with memory, not talent. Make a list of your own frequently used phrases — every writer has a personal list — and before publishing, read the text once just to find them. In later rounds, this list moves into your inner ear and, before you write, rejects the unnecessary sentence. Every time you delete a “completely,” you have moved one step closer to more precise prose.
