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I have trouble understanding the sentence below

文章が長くならないよう、必要のない部分は省略した

I roughly translate: literature doesn't need to be long, omit unnecessary part

  • Can I use passive form “unnecessary part was omitted” instead?
  • How should I interpret ならないよう、必要のない部分. I don’t understand why のis there
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  • 2
    Please ask one question per question.
    – user1478
    Sep 26, 2016 at 18:06
  • 文章が長くならないよう、必要のない部分は省略した。 is just one sentence. -- In order to avoid the text becoming too long, unnecessary parts were deleted. __________ の in 必要のない部分 is optional. _______ Cf. What does 「ならないようにする」 mean? japanese.stackexchange.com/q/13839/16344
    – HizHa
    Sep 26, 2016 at 18:37

1 Answer 1

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  • dictionary-form + よう means "so as to ~", "so that ~", etc. See this article.
  • 必要のない部分 literally means "the part where there is not necessity". 必要のない is a relative clause that adjectivally modifies 部分, and の can be used in place of が in relative clauses. See: How does the の work in 「日本人の知らない日本語」? Of course you can simply translate it as "unnecessary parts".
  • した is not an imperative form. This sentence is not an order but a neutral sentence with the omitted subject (="I"). The last half literally means "I omitted unnecessarily parts", but you can translate it also as "unnecessary parts were omitted".

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