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in a scientific paper written in American English, I am using the following sentence: "...we would argue that it is sufficiently established that..."

Can the sentence be shortened to "...we would argue it sufficiently established that..."

Thankyou in advance.

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    The sentence could be written either way, and both mean the same thing. But the first sentence is clearer, and the second may cause the reader to do a 'double-take' and have to re-read it to understand it properly. Why substitute a clear sentence by a less-clear one for the sake of 2 words (6 letters)?
    – TrevorD
    Commented May 3, 2016 at 10:03

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Like TrevorD said in his comment, I had to do a double-take when reading the second sentence. It is technically correct, but could trip some readers up a little.

What you could do is simply cut the first instances of 'that' from the first version, since it seems to be kind of extraneous. That would leave you with:

"...we would argue it is sufficiently established that..."

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