Section 2.4: Clarity and Conciseness

2.4 Clarity and Conciseness

FSOT Focus: Clear, concise writing is critical for Foreign Service Officers who must convey complex policy information to senior decision-makers under tight deadlines. The exam tests your ability to spot and correct wordiness, redundancies, weak passive constructions, and nominalizations.

In the professional environment of the United States Foreign Service, written communication serves as the primary currency of diplomacy. Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) write under intense time constraints for readers—ranging from ambassadors and senior State Department policymakers in Washington to foreign ministers and local journalists—who must absorb complex information rapidly. In this context, verbose, redundant, or ambiguous writing is not merely a stylistic blemish; it is an operational risk that can lead to delayed policy decisions, misinterpretations of diplomatic intent, and administrative bottlenecks.

The English Usage and Comprehension section of the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) assesses a candidate’s ability to recognize and correct violations of clarity and conciseness. These questions often present sentences that are grammatically correct but structurally bloated, testing the candidate's capacity to identify the most direct and clear way to express a given idea. This section analyzes the four primary enemies of clarity: wordiness, redundancy, passive voice abuse, and nominalizations.

Wordiness: The Proliferation of Padded Phrases

Wordiness refers to the use of more words than necessary to convey a thought. In diplomatic writing, wordiness often stems from a misplaced belief that verbose language sounds more professional or authoritative. On the FSOT, candidates must identify and eliminate padded phrases that obscure the core message of a sentence.

Common sources of wordiness include:

1. Wordy lead-ins: Phrases like "It is important to bear in mind that," "It should be noted that," or "There is no doubt that" delay the introduction of the subject and main verb.
   • Wordy: It is crucial to point out that the bilateral treaty will require senate approval.
   • Concise: The bilateral treaty requires Senate approval.
2. Prepositional phrase piling: Using multiple prepositional phrases in a row when a possessive noun or an adjective would suffice.
   • Wordy: The report on the status of the economy of the country of Tunisia was submitted by the officer.
   • Concise: The officer submitted the Tunisian economic status report.
3. Compound prepositions: Replacing single prepositions with wordy phrases.
   • Wordy: In the event that the summit is canceled, we will proceed in accordance with the contingency plan.
   • Concise: If the summit is canceled, we will follow the contingency plan.

Redundancy: Unintentional Repetition

Redundancy is the needless repetition of words or concepts within a sentence. Unlike wordiness, which uses filler words, redundancy uses words that express the same meaning twice. In the fast-paced flow of diplomatic reporting, redundant phrases dilute the impact of key findings.

On the FSOT, redundancy traps often appear as:

• Doublets: Pairs of words that mean the same thing joined by "and" (e.g., basic and fundamental, rules and regulations, null and void, first and foremost).
• Redundant modifiers: Modifiers that repeat the definition of the noun they modify (e.g., collaborate together, advance planning, past history, foreign imports, summarize briefly, unexpected emergency).
• Proportional redundancies: Phrases that repeat numerical concepts (e.g., fewer in number, blue in color, period of three weeks).

Sentence Revision example:

• Original: The consular team made plans in advance to collaborate together on the new regulations and rules.
• Revision: The consular team planned to collaborate on the new regulations.

Active vs. Passive Voice: Assigning Agency

The choice between active and passive voice is one of the most critical decisions in professional writing. In active voice, the subject performs the action expressed by the verb (The ambassador signed the agreement). In passive voice, the subject receives the action expressed by the verb (The agreement was signed by the ambassador). While the passive voice is grammatically correct and occasionally necessary, its overuse creates several problems:

1. Hidden Agency: Passive sentences often omit the actor entirely (Mistakes were made), which is highly problematic in diplomatic cables where knowing who took an action is crucial.
2. Verbosity: Passive constructions require helping verbs and prepositions, making sentences longer.
3. Weakened Impact: Passive verbs lack the vigor and directness of active verbs.

On the FSOT, check if the sentence hides the actor. If a sentence uses passive voice without a clear reason, the active voice option is almost always the superior choice.

When to use passive voice: Use passive voice only when the actor is unknown, unimportant, or when you wish to emphasize the object of the action rather than the actor. In diplomatic communications, passive voice can sometimes serve as a deliberate tool to soften a statement or protect sources (e.g., The report was leaked to the press). However, for standard reporting, prefer active voice.

Nominalizations: Smothered Verbs

Nominalization is the process of turning a verb into a noun. While nominalization is useful for abstract discussions, it frequently "smothers" active verbs, replacing them with weak verbs (such as make, conduct, perform, or provide) combined with a noun form of the original verb.

• Smothered verb: The political section conducted an analysis of the election.
• Active verb: The political section analyzed the election.

Nominalizations add unnecessary length, make sentences harder to parse, and drain the energy from your writing.

Strategies for Pruning Prose

To consistently write with clarity and conciseness, adopt a two-step editing strategy:

1. The Preposition Hunt: Scan your draft for the prepositions of, in, at, on, by, and for. If a sentence has more than three prepositions, try to rephrase it. Often, you can turn a prepositional phrase into an adjective or possessive noun (e.g., the policy of the department becomes the department's policy).
2. Eliminating Self-Evident Information: Do not state what the reader can easily assume. For example, in the phrase the green-colored document, colored is redundant because green is a color. Similarly, in the city of Paris, the city of is unnecessary because the reader knows Paris is a city.