Economy of Language. Make it punchy!

"Many successful people had to have good characteristics to help them succeed, for example, courage, responsibility and good communication." 

How can we help this sentence?  One way is to make it shorter, more concise. Economy of language means packing as much you can into every sentence.  It also means reading the sentence back to yourself, aloud, over and over again until it achieves the right rhythm.

Try: "Successful people must have courage, responsibility, and strong communication skills."  

Notice what I took out: "for example", "many", "good", "help" "to".   We went from fifteen to nine words.  As Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit." 

Exercise: 
Look over a sentence from your writing.  Re-write the sentence, and see what you can take out.  

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