We know that excellent written communication is vital to business success - but there's so much "claptrap" and mystery surrounding it. Improving written expression is straightforward - all you need is some guidance on simple techniques and then some practice.

This exercise will take only ten minutes.

The following short article lacks impact because it's too long-winded. Re-write the article trying to reduce its length from one hundred and ninety-one to at least one hundred and thirty. You must include all vital facts. Feel free to substitute words, delete phrases and even (hint hint nudge nudge, say no more) re-arrange whole sentences and paragraphs.

Don't worry - no marking of your effort (and so no possible humiliation) is involved! You may know nothing about civil engineering: this does not matter – you can still improve the expression.

Type your improved version here

It has been said that heavy trucks and the increase in car and truck traffic are making it more certain that the lifetime of civil engineering structures such as roads and bridges will be made shorter. There is a feeling within the civil engineering profession that there is no idea on how to judge the exact number of years a bridge will continue to be safely usable. One could say that a bridge could last well over 50 years because it is over-engineered - but this is likely to be considered as not adequate by planners. A new instrument has now been recently developed and which is capable of measuring fluctuating loads which act on the critical parts of structures over long periods of time, and analysing them instantly is now available. In the past the problem has been seen to be that while measurement of the distortion can be easily made on a structure, measurement of the loads that actually contribute to the stress is more difficult. This is unfortunate, because it is information based on vibrating loads on structures, which is used to predict when structures are likely to fail.