Good academic writing should be clear, relevant and concise, avoiding unnecessary ‘padding’, even when this might be valued in other kinds of texts such as descriptive or literary writing. In other words, it is writing that aims to communicate its content in a way that is as unembellished as possible; it is writing that is free of wordiness. This obviously refers to vocabulary and expressions, but also to sentence structure and paragraphing.

A good way to make sure that you write concisely is to be clear about what you want to say before putting it on paper. In theory, at this stage in your final project, you should no longer be worrying about that (your abstract, table of contents and introduction have covered this), but it is helpful to keep in mind that your discussion needs to contribute directly to this by having a clear purpose and by sticking to that purpose. If your writing becomes irrelevant, it will not be expressing your ideas concisely.

Your paragraphs must each have a clearly recognizable function. If they are not developing your views, if they are not moving your discussion forward through critical argument, then your writing is not suitably concise.  

Also, the grammatical way in which you express your ideas (especially the choice of active or passive voice) will have a significant impact on concise writing, by opting for simpler constructions that are, at the same time, clearer and more effective.

Finally, you also need to constantly pay attention to a number of smaller elements in your writing, including avoiding redundancy and repetition and eliminating unnecessary words.

The following subsections provide basic guidelines on how to do this.