Decision rule and boundaries
Text wateriness is an editorial description for words that add little meaning to a reader’s task; it is not a search-engine ranking metric. Wateriness is an editorial judgement about filler, not a ranking metric. A sentence earns its place when it supplies a fact, decision rule, example, instruction, definition, or necessary qualification for the reader’s task.
How to inspect it
Review a section against its heading and mark sentences that only announce, repeat, hedge, or praise without adding meaning. Then check that removing them did not erase a condition, source, or safety boundary.
Practical workflow
Lead with the answer, turn vague claims into specific ones where evidence permits, and retain the caveats that stop a reader from misapplying advice. Read the edited sequence as a newcomer would, not only as a word-count exercise.
Common mistakes and measurement limits
Shorter is not automatically clearer. Cutting definitions, steps, evidence, or accessibility context can make a page deceptively brief and force the reader to search again for what the page should have explained. The common failure mode is deleting qualifications, definitions, and evidence merely to make a text shorter.