Get rid of words you don’t need:  Lawyers in particular love unnecessary words, I suspect because we spent a lot of money to go to law school and we want to sound like it.  “Attached hereto is the aforementioned contract” sounds like something a lawyer would write.  On the other hand, “the contract is attached” is just plain English.  One place to spot words you can cut is in prepositional phrases.  In the sample sentences, I changed “in order to” to “to.”  Similarly, “at this point in time” became “now” and “at that very moment” changed to “immediately.”  Using the Find function in Word to search for prepositions, especially “of,” “at” and “to,” is a great way to discover phrases you can simplify.  Read each phrase and ask yourself how you might say it in one word or, at most, two.

Don’t just be — do:  Another way to make writing sharper is to write in active rather than passive voice.  Active voice:  “her husband hired a detective.”  Passive voice:  “A detective was hired by her husband.”  “We evaluated” (active); “an evaluation was made” (passive).  Active voice shortens sentences and makes them easier to read and understand.  It also keeps the focus on the actor.  If you won an award or a race, don’t you want people to know you won it?  And be excited about it?  “I won the race” sounds a lot more exciting than “A race was won” or even “A race was won by me.”  Of course, sometimes you want to be anonymous.  In his 1987 State of the Union speech, President Reagan didn’t say he’d made mistakes regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, he said “serious mistakes were made….”  Who made them?  Perhaps no one will focus on that.  Another time for passive voice is when you use it to emphasize the object of the sentence.  For instance, if you and your friend have loved every book that won an Edgar Award, and you want to persuade your friend to read a particular writer, you might say, “An Edgar Award was won by this writer.”  The point is “wow, an Edgar Award, that writer must be amazing.”  Yet another reason to use passive voice is when you don’t know who performed an action:  “A tower had been built in the village” might be the only way you can frame a sentence if you don’t know who built the tower.  Short of a good reason to use passive voice, however, phrase all your sentences in active voice and see how much more compelling it makes your writing.  You can find passive voice by searching for the “to be” words — was, were, is, are.  The word “by” also often signals passive voice (think “was followed by” or “was loved by” or “was won by”.