A new reduced formulation for modeling elastic structures or structural components with geometric nonlinear- ities is presented. This formulation is obtained as a generalization of the concept of foreshortening, which has been successfully used by other authors to model beams. Some examples are provided that illustrate the generality and validity of this formulation. The proposed theory is compared to previous work related to foreshortening, variable reduction in nonlinear elastic problems, and the use of a geometric stiffness matrix. Some guidelines are also given to implement the proposed method and to interpret the concepts that it involves. The reduction method presented is general, but a corotational approach is followed to simplify the exposition. The use of the foreshortening 9 is another method that has been proposed to solve this problem. This interesting concept provides certain importantcalculation advantagesdespitethat,unfortunately, it has been impossible to generalize structural members other than cantileverbeams.Thepresentpaperdevelopsa generalizationofthe concept of foreshortening that can be applied to any type of struc- ture or structural component with elastic behavior and geometric nonlinearities. The result is a method of structural analysis with variable reduc- tion that provides considerable savings in calculation times, as well as an interesting theoretical model for the purpose of studying these types of problems analytically. In addition, the presented deriva- tion allows a better understanding of the relationships between the different approaches that are used to solve the geometric stiffening problem. 9 Thispaperisorganizedasfollows.First,abriefintroductiontothe foreshortening concept is presented (Sec. II). This is followed by a second-order corotational formulation of elastic structural analysis includinggeometric nonlinearities thatprovideaneasy introduction to the ideas presented (Sec. III). Next, foreshortening is redee ned and generalized in the framework of the structural formulation just mentioned, up to a new reduced formulation of the nonlinear prob- lem (Sec. IV). This derivation is subsequently ree ned, and relevant terms are identie ed and interpreted (Sec. V). A brief description of the particularization of the proposed formalism in the case of a planar cantilever beam (Sec. VI) and the key steps of the numerical algorithmofthestaticproblem (Sec.VII)aresubsequentlyincluded. InSec.VII,itis also explained howto usethepresented formulation togeneratereducedcomponentmodelsvalidformultibodyanalysis. In the succeeding section, the most relevant connections with other derivations where foreshortening or variable reduction are applied are discussed. Finally, some examples are provided that illustrate the potential of this theory (Sec. IX).