文书写作的原则：Less is more

Xibei

写文章和生活的principle一样，
less is more。那么到底如何做到用Less gets more呢？

Full, proper names. Yes, the official name of the school is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but EVERYONE knows it as MIT. EVERYONE knows that US is short for United States. There are definitely times when you want to avoid acronyms, especially when they’re industry-specific, but when they’re common, use them. They save your word count for more important ideas.

Repetition. Do everything in your power to avoid saying the same words or phrases in the same sentence. Not only does it eat up word count, but it can make your reader lose track of where they are in the idea. “Chemical Engineering graduate student” or “Chemical Engineering graduate program,” but not both.

Unnecessary verbs. Sometimes we add extra actions to a statement, thinking that it makes us sound more specific, detailed, or thoughtful… but it just doesn’t work that way. If you are applying, it’s because you want to attend, so why bother mentioning that you want to attend? You’re not applying so that you WON’T attend, right?

Unnecessary Adjective Clauses and Phrases. This is probably the most common mistake essay writers make that leads to heavy word counts. Particularly for foreign writers, adjectives don’t always translate easily. “With the highest ranking in the United States” makes up almost 25% of the sentence… and can be turned into two words.