Good writing is essential to your ability to communicate with clients, judges, colleagues, and those who read your blogs and social media posts (whom you hope to convert to clients at some point). Whether you are putting together formal articles and briefs or sending a quick email response, your writing can confirm that you are a professional adult… or tell a different story.

Even the best of us will succumb to typos, and unless they are in a particularly embarrassing place (like a resume), we will be forgiven. But systematic use of unnecessary phrases that muddle your meaning can be a turn off for your readers. Here are some common culprits of cluttered copy that can be stricken from your lexicon post haste:

Redundancy. Our speech contains a lot of redundancy, and it is easy to let some of these conversational quirks sneak into your writing. But what is ok for informal speech can be disruptive when in print. Reducing repetition is an easy way to bring the focus back to the idea you are trying to elucidate. All of these could be shortened to just one word...CONTINUE READING