How to Make Your Writing Less Wordy: Cut Prepositional Phrases

Have you heard about cutting your final draft by 10%, even when you think you’re done? It’s a writing trick usually attributed to Stephen King in On Writing, but it probably goes back to the ancient Greeks. Or at least Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, “The most valuable of all talents, [is] that of never using two words where one will do.”¹

It’s smart advice. Wordy writing is clunky, flabby, fluffy, padded, awkward, vague, and weak. Concise writing is better.

But here’s the problem: If someone tells you your writing is “too wordy,” you might not know what they mean. Or you might not know how to make writing less wordy or how to fix wordiness. Should you cut whole paragraphs? Shorten every sentence? Delete all your favorite details?

Start smaller. One of the fastest, easiest ways to make your writing less wordy is to look for prepositions like of, for, in, to, with, and on. Those prepositions, along with many others, form prepositional phrases. They’re often unnecessary and can be cut or revised so they’re shorter.

You don’t need to remove every prepositional phrase. They’re useful! But too many make your writing wordy.

What Makes Writing Wordy?

The trouble with wordiness is that too many words dilute your main points and your best ideas. Wordy writing is hard to read and can be confusing. Some of the most common problems include:

• Repetition
• Passive voice
• Filter words
• Over-explaining
• Too many intensifiers like very, extremely, really, fairly, pretty, completely, and totally
• Excessive adverbs and adjectives
• Too many prepositional phrases

Prepositional phrases are a major contributor to wordiness and one of the easiest problems to spot. They’re short, common words we use casually in conversation when we can’t think of more specific terms or don’t want to sound formal. And that carries over into writing.

At best, wordy writing makes your message unclear. It means your reader sifts through weak words in search of big ideas.

The goal is to use as few words as possible to communicate meaning — no more, no less. That could mean 500 words for a blog post or 3,000. A 20,000-word ebook or a 100,000-word novel. Concise doesn’t mean short. It means no wasted words.

You might think your final revision is stripped down to the core. But if you haven’t checked prepositional phrases, you can still slash the word count by 10% and improve your writing even more.

What Is a Prepositional Phrase?

A preposition is a word or phrase that shows the relationship between a noun, pronoun, or phrase and other words. Prepositions usually come before a noun: a person or animal, a place or location, an object or thing, or an idea.

In school, you might have learned how prepositions show relationship to a house: on the roof, in the window, above the doorway, over the house, behind the house, under the house, and so on. Can you think of any others?

Here are some common prepositions:

about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, but, by, despite, down, during, except, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, onto, out, outside, over, past, since, through, throughout, till, to, toward, under, underneath, until, up, upon, with, within, without

And these multiple-word prepositional phrases are guaranteed to send your word count sky high if used unnecessarily:

according to, ahead of, apart from, as for, as of, as per, as regards, aside from, back to, because of, close to, due to, except for, far from, in to (or into), inside of, instead of, left of, near to, next to, on to (or onto), out from, out of, outside of, owing to, prior to, pursuant to, regardless of, right of, subsequent to, thanks to, that of, as opposed to, as far as, as soon as, by means of, for the sake of, in accordance with, in addition to, in case of, in front of, in lieu of, in order to, in place of, in point of, in spite of, on account of, on behalf of, on top of, with regard to, with respect to, with a view to

Remember that a preposition has no meaning of its own. It needs an object or a focus, something to point to or connect in relationship to an antecedent, a word that comes before it.

Example: The cat is under the sofa. The cat is the antecedent, under is the preposition, and the sofa is the object. Under the sofa is the full prepositional phrase.

Common Prepositional Phrases

Let’s look at some prepositional phrases in sentences to see how they work. Prepositions are underlined, and the full prepositional phrases are italicized.

• The box is on top of the cabinet.
• She ate below the deck.
• Her generosity was without limits.
• Give the sandwich to that guy.
• He’s the CEO of the company.
• The ketchup dripped on the sides of the table.
• The cat hid under the sofa.
• Her demotion is in accordance with company policy.
• She emailed a warning in regard to the approaching storm.
• He eats dinner after he goes running.
• That can wait until I get home.
• She was fired on account of her excessive tardiness.

Which sentences would you reword to make them more concise and less wordy?

Prepositions can act as adjectives and answer the question which one

Take the cat out of the living room.
Which cat? The cat that’s under the sofa.

Give the sandwich to that guy.
Which guy? Tom, the CEO of the company.

They can also act as adverbs to describe when, how, why, or where.

Rebecca was fired.
Why was Rebecca fired? She was fired on account of her excessive tardiness.

Juan enjoys a healthy dinner.
When does he eat dinner? He eats dinner after he goes running.

You get the picture.

Prepositions are useful, but they carry no intrinsic meaning. And when they’re removed, we’re forced to find better, more descriptive words.

How to Find and Fix Wordy Prepositional Phrases

This writing trick doesn’t require high-level grammar expertise. Just use your word processing app’s “find and replace” tool to locate the most common prepositions: of, in, to, for, and at. You can also use Ctrl+F on Windows or Cmd+F on Mac to find prepositions in almost any document.

When searching, be sure to enter a blank space before and after the preposition to avoid results like off or often and attack or attic. Then examine each prepositional phrase you find, and see if you can replace it with something shorter and more precise.

Here are some examples of prepositional phrases revised:

She was fired on account of her excessive tardiness.
She was fired for her excessive tardiness.
Her excessive tardiness meant termination.
Habitual lateness got her fired.
She was often late and got fired.

How you reword the sentence has to do with depends on the context. (I caught myself here!)

Tom is the CEO of the company.
Tom is the company CEO.
Tom is the CEO.

Again, the rewording will vary. If “company” was mentioned previously, no need to repeat it.

He eats dinner after he goes running.
He runs, then he eats dinner.
Running is Juan’s priority.

Sometimes exchanging one prepositional phrase for another shortens and improves the sentence, like this:

She was fired on account of her excessive tardiness.
She was fired due to excessive tardiness.

The goal is crafting a sentence that’s shorter, better, and works within your context.

He eats dinner after he goes running.
Running first, then dinner for Juan.

Remember, your intended meaning and style govern the change.

Replacing Prepositional Phrases With Stronger Words Means Better Writing

Sometimes just a quick glance works: does a sentence have a lot of two- or three-letter words? Are sentences riddled with two- or three-letter words? (See what I did?) What about paragraphs? Lots of tiny words usually mean preposition overload.

Search for prepositions to see how bad it is. Or how good! Go ahead. Pick a blog post, an article, or a chapter of a novel. Run a search. Try of, on, for, and in. How many can you find?

Now get to work on rewording and shortening those sentences. Check your word count first and calculate 10%. For example, 10% of 1650 is 165. Can you chop 165 words and take it down to 1485? If you’re like most writers, you’ll easily hit 10%. You might have prepositions left over, but your writing will be stronger, smarter, sharper, and snappier.

Want a quick reference while you edit? Grab a copy of Wordy Prepositional Phrases. Keep it nearby when you revise blog posts, articles, essays, or AI-assisted drafts.

¹Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Bernard Moore