ABSTRACT
Technical prose is characteristically brief and concise (Davis, 1977). It makes liberal use of linguistic economizing devices such as noun compounds (e.g., Dubois, 1982; Horsella & Pérez, 1991), which compress a great deal of information into very few words (e.g., aircraft gas turbine temperature control amplifiers), and is usually devoid of verbiage not essential for the comprehension of the text. Such excess, usually referred to as wordiness, Brogan (1973, p. xi) calls “semantic noise.” Semantic noise arises from a variety of sources, including redundant terms (e.g., human utterances vs. utterances), unnecessary phrases (e.g., with the use/aid of a thermometer vs. with a thermometer), circumlocutions (e.g., is not the case vs. is false), and what Brogan (1973, p. 152) calls “verb-muffling expressions” (e.g., the conclusions that were drawn vs. the conclusions drawn). The latter category includes relative clause reduction, the focus of this chapter.
