5 exercises — practise cutting wordy, roundabout phrasing down to direct technical English.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence avoids circumlocution while keeping the same meaning as "due to the fact that the server was experiencing a period of high load"?
"Because the server was under high load" replaces the wordy phrase "due to the fact that" with the single concise conjunction "because", and replaces "experiencing a period of high load" with the direct phrase "under high load" — cutting word count roughly in half without losing meaning. Option A is the original circumlocutory phrase, kept for comparison. Option C and D add even more padding ("owing to the circumstance that", "in light of the fact that", "subject to a state of") — these are examples of circumlocution getting worse, not better, and should be avoided entirely in technical writing where directness and scannability matter.
2 / 5
Which rewrite of "make a decision regarding whether or not to proceed with the deployment" is most concise and grammatically correct?
"Decide whether to proceed with the deployment" replaces the nominalized phrase "make a decision regarding" with the direct verb "decide", and drops the redundant "or not" (since "whether" already implies a binary choice, "or not" is usually unnecessary unless emphasizing contrast). This is a standard circumlocution fix: turning a noun-heavy phrase back into a verb. Option C is the original wordy phrase. Option A keeps "or not" and adds "come to a decision on the question of", which is even more roundabout. Option B is grammatically awkward ("whether or not proceeding... should occur" is a convoluted nominalized construction) and less clear than the direct infinitive form in option D.
3 / 5
In a design doc, which sentence most concisely expresses "it is our recommendation that the team should give consideration to the adoption of a message queue"?
"We recommend adopting a message queue" cuts the sentence from sixteen words to six by replacing the nominalized phrases "it is our recommendation that" and "give consideration to the adoption of" with the direct verb "recommend" followed by a gerund. This is the clearest, most scannable phrasing for a design doc, where recommendations should stand out immediately. Options A, B, and C all preserve one or more layers of unnecessary nominalization and passive framing ("it is our recommendation", "consideration be given", "adopting... by the team"), which bury the actual recommendation under formal-sounding but empty structure — a common circumlocution trap in corporate technical writing.
4 / 5
Which sentence avoids circumlocution when explaining why a test failed?
"The test failed because the mock returned stale data" is direct: subject + verb + reason clause, with no unnecessary nominalizations. Option C piles up circumlocutory phrases ("the reason for the failure of", "on account of the fact that", "data that was stale" instead of "stale data"). Option B nominalizes both the main action ("the failure that occurred") and the cause ("the returning of stale data by the mock" instead of "the mock returned stale data"), and uses an unnecessary passive construction. Option A inverts the sentence awkwardly with a cleft structure ("It was... that...") that adds no emphasis value here and needlessly nominalizes "underwent a failure" instead of simply saying "failed".
5 / 5
Which is the most concise, direct way to express "at this point in time, we do not currently have the capability to support that feature"?
"We can't support that feature yet" collapses several redundant circumlocutions into a short, direct sentence: "at this point in time" and "currently" are redundant duplicates of the same idea (pick one, or better, use tense/aspect and "yet" to convey it), and "have the capability to support" is a wordy nominalization of the simple verb "support" combined with the modal "can't". Options A, B, and C all repeat "at this point in time" together with "currently" (redundant), and use "capability to support"/"capability required for the support of" instead of the direct verb "support" — hallmark signs of circumlocution that technical writing should eliminate for clarity and brevity.