Pi may go on forever, but your writing shouldn’t. Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 (i.e. 3.14), and in honor of everyone’s favorite endless irrational number, we’ve curated six tips for more concise writing.

Overly Long Words. Eschew sesquipedalian diction! In other words, don’t use long words–at least not when short ones will do. Our language has a rich lexicon, but you don’t need to dive for your thesaurus every time you write. In a 2006 paper, Psychologist Daniel M. Oppenheimer of Princeton University noted that, “a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence.” He concluded that using needlessly complex language resulted in a negative impression of the writer’s intelligence.

Wordy Expressions. Brevity is the soul of wit, so get to the point. Unnecessarily wordy expressions like due to the fact that use multiple words…

Read more | huffingtonpost.com/grammarly

Photo credit | Pi, the number and the circle by smmot