One of my jobs as a copyeditor is to weed out the wordiness in a paper. This article explains one form of wordiness that surrounds verbs. Another form is adding unneeded words to embellish another. An example is the word "activity." Risk-taking is an activity so saying risk-taking activity is wordy. Another very common add-on is "behavior." Risk-taking is a behavior and does not need to be labelled as such. Part of the problem here is the word order. The real phrase is that someone "is taking a risk." In this word order it becomes clearer that the activity is the taking of risk and if done frequently is a behavior that a person exhibits.
Here is the link to the article: https://aceseditors.org/news/2019/clamp-down-on-unhelping-verbs
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Author: Jonathan MooreCopyeditor of economics Archives
May 2022
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