Noun clusters
Similarly, do what you can to eliminate noun clusters. A noun cluster is three or four words, mostly nouns although some may be adjectives, which are strung together. Sometimes they are called noun strings. Two words together can be easy to understand:

kitty litter, course instructor, car lot, Oscar winners, Parks Canada.

When we have three words together, it becomes harder. We have to unpack each word before we can understand what the phrase means. Here is one for you: budget management strategies. And another: cost impact considerations. And there is also outcomes management process. Sentences with noun clusters explained more clearly are often a little longer, but this is one case where extra words are needed to improve comprehensibility. Cost impact considerations really just means We must think about the effects that the cost will have on . . . .”

When noun clusters are longer than three words, your writing becomes leaden and reading slows down. An example is community capacity initiatives fund. Another one is quality control booklet review customer focus workshop summary. Have you noticed that you have to read right past the start of the phrase and reach almost to the end before you can begin to make sense of the words?

Noun clusters cause many people to stop reading and throw the document down. They are the modern equivalent of telegrams, in which people tried to convey their meaning with as few words as possible because they had to pay per word.

But after warning about being too succinct, I’ll now return to the importance of eliminating words.

Cutting out unnecessary words is a process that cannot be done all at once, although practice will increase the speed. Leaving a gap of several days will always bring improvement to your writing.

33 words.

That last paragraph was something I wrote three days ago. Let’s try it again:

Cutting out unnecessary words cannot be done all at once, although practice will increase the speed. Leaving a gap of several days will always improve your writing.

27 words, with no change of meaning.

A longer gap will produce even more improvements. Which of us has not looked at a piece we wrote six months earlier and immediately wanted to make changes.

A report usually has a deadline and may be relevant for a limited time. But information pamphlets may go on being used for years. In this case, you could consider the first edition to be a work in progress. With the next print run, make changes that have occurred to you, or which readers have suggested. If no one is picking up the pamphlet, or you know that actions suggested by the pamphlet are not being carried out, maybe the whole thing needs reworking.