TL;DR
7/10. A practical self-editing tool for the common problem of wordiness, a dictionary of bloated phrases and their leaner alternatives that treats concision as a learnable discipline rather than vague advice. A solid, useful resource, held from higher by its narrow single-purpose scope, the judgment it requires, and overlap with comprehensive style guides.
Wordiness is one of the most common and most fixable problems in writing, and The Dictionary of Concise Writing by Robert Hartwell Fiske is a reference built specifically to cure it. Despite the name, it is less a dictionary than an editing tool: a guide to reducing wordiness, organized as a dictionary of bloated phrases paired with their leaner alternatives, plus general guidelines for tighter prose. For a writer who tends toward the verbose, the redundant, or the padded, it is a genuinely useful, practical resource for cutting flab and sharpening sentences. Judged as the focused self-editing tool it is, it does its job well.
The premise is sound and the need is real: most first-draft prose is too wordy, and concision is a learnable skill that immediately improves clarity and impact.
A practical cure for wordiness
The book’s core, its dictionary of wordy phrases and their concise replacements, is its most useful feature. A writer can look up a flabby construction they habitually use and find the tighter alternative, and browsing the entries trains the eye to recognize the padding, redundancy, and circumlocution that bloat prose. Combined with its general guidelines on concise writing, it functions as both a reference and a self-teaching tool, helping a writer not just fix specific phrases but internalize the habit of economy. For the common, correctable problem of verbosity, this targeted, example-driven approach is exactly the kind of practical help that produces immediate improvement.
Keep reading
Cutting the weasel words and padding from your prose — Fiske’s wordy-phrase fixes, in the craft of lean, economical writing.
Concision as a skill
The deeper value is that the book treats concision as a learnable discipline rather than a vague aspiration. Tight writing is not about being terse but about cutting the words that add nothing, the redundancies, the empty intensifiers, the long phrases that a single word replaces, so that what remains carries real weight. By cataloguing the specific offenders and their cures, Fiske gives a writer a concrete way to practice that discipline until it becomes instinct, which is far more useful than the general advice to omit needless words that every writer has heard and few know how to apply. The specificity is what makes it work.
Keep reading
Breaking the bad writing habits that bloat your prose — the verbosity Fiske targets, among the habits worth unlearning.
The honest caveats
The caveats are about scope. It is a narrow, single-purpose reference, focused on concision and nothing else, so it is a supplement to a writer’s toolkit rather than a complete craft education, valuable for this specific weakness and silent on everything else. Concision can also be overdone, stripped too far, prose becomes choppy or loses necessary nuance and rhythm, so the tool requires judgment rather than mechanical application; not every long phrase is wrong. And its content overlaps with the concision guidance in comprehensive style guides. These are the normal limits of a focused tool rather than flaws, and within its lane it does genuinely useful work.
Verdict
It is a practical, genuinely useful self-editing reference for the common and correctable problem of wordiness, valuable for its concrete dictionary of bloated phrases and their leaner alternatives and for treating concision as a learnable discipline rather than vague advice. It earns a solid rating, held from higher by its narrow single-purpose scope, the judgment required so concision is not overdone, and overlap with comprehensive style guides. For a writer who struggles with verbosity and wants a targeted, example-driven fix, it is an effective tool that produces immediate improvement; for broader craft, it is one specialized piece. A sound, focused editing resource.
Explore the hub
The Writing Hub — self-editing, concision, and the rest of the craft, gathered in one place.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Dictionary of Concise Writing?
Robert Hartwell Fiske’s reference for reducing wordiness, organized as a dictionary of bloated phrases paired with their leaner alternatives, plus general guidelines for tighter prose. Despite the name, it is more an editing tool than a true dictionary.
How is it useful?
A writer can look up a flabby construction they habitually use and find the tighter alternative, while browsing the entries trains the eye to recognize padding, redundancy, and circumlocution. It works as both a reference and a self-teaching tool for the habit of economy.
What is its deeper value?
It treats concision as a learnable discipline rather than vague aspiration. By cataloguing specific offenders and their cures, it gives a writer a concrete way to practice cutting words that add nothing until economy becomes instinct, far more useful than the general advice to omit needless words.
What are its limits?
It is a narrow, single-purpose reference focused on concision alone, a supplement rather than a complete craft education. Concision can also be overdone, so it requires judgment rather than mechanical application, and its content overlaps with comprehensive style guides.
Who should read it?
Writers who tend toward verbosity, redundancy, or padded prose and want a targeted, example-driven fix. For broader craft needs it is one specialized piece, but for the specific problem of wordiness it produces immediate improvement.
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