Omit Needless Words That Serve No Purpose
When in high school, I had an English teacher who made us copy out by hand the guidelines from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Chances are pretty good that you’ve heard of this book and maybe even that you labored over similar assignments during school. At the time, it seemed like a busy work assignment (and it probably was one, to some degree), but many of the guidelines have stuck with me, among them the demonstrative “Omit needless words.” I’ll quote the editors further:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
Of course, this is problematic. Who’s to say which details are the necessary ones? One person’s aesthetic may demand more description than another’s. Putting those cases aside, there are certainly plenty of unambiguously needless words many of us use in our writing (and in our speech) that we could omit. In many cases, I believe we add these words when trying to sound more formal or official. Some examples from Elements of Style follow:
| Bad | Good |
|---|---|
| used for fuel purposes | used for fuel |
| he is a man who | he |
| in a hasty manner | hastily |
| this is a subject that | this subject |
| the reason why is that | because |
In each of these cases the phrases on the left contain extra words that add nothing but clutter. I took a quick look back through some of my posts here to see if any obvious candidates for omission jumped out at me. I won’t flog myself too diligently here in the public eye, but here go a couple of things I might have phrased more concisely:
| Bad | Better? |
|---|---|
| he often adopts something of a folksy voice | he often adopts a folksy voice |
| from in the midst of the maelstrom | from within the maelstrom |
How about you? Do you ever catch yourself padding your writing with filler words? Do you find that you do so more frequently when you’re trying to sound formal (or is this theory of mine nonsense?)? As an exercise, consider revisiting an old post and seeing if there are words you could omit without altering the meaning or mood of the post.
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Very helpful post! Sometimes we do things we don’t even notice! Thanks for the tip!
Is it just me or is that extract from ‘Elements of Style’ a bit wordy? But yes I agree, I often put unnecessary words to pad out my writing :\
You know, I wondered that myself. The syntax of the sentence isn’t terribly straightforward, but I don’t know that there are any unnecessary words — perhaps the author could have condensed “avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline” into just one of the two phrases.
I’ll probably find a lot but then those were my thoughts then. But if it will make a big difference, why not. Cool post!
For the month of August I wrote fiction and some non-fiction that had to wrap itself up in 50 words. VERY concise. What a great writing exercise that was. Every noun and verb had to be powerful; adjectives and adverbs were cut to a minimum.
Some were pretty darn good; others – not so much. But it was still very fun.
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BTW, I love the easy access to a short link. Thank you. rbs
Wow, a short story in 50 words is tiny. I know Hemingway did one in six words, but not many of us are Hemingways.
I teach World History and a ton of writing. Would it be ok if I used this with my students?
Sure, Jessica, though I didn’t add very much to what Strunk and White gave us. By the way, there’s an illustrated edition of Elements of Style. I haven’t ever taken a peek at it, but I wonder if it’d be somehow more palatable to students. (Maybe somebody ought to make an iPhone app of it.)
I find myself adding extra words that are not necessary, but I’m working on improving my writing. Your blog always helps (now I’m worried I added extra words I don’t need).
I disagree with the examples from your own writing. The words omitted in the examples from the book serve no purpose. The words you omitted from your own examples serve the purpose of more colorful writing. I agree that they can be shortened, but I don’t agree that it makes the writing sound better
Great post though!
Being a college student most of my essays and reports have to be a certain word limit, and therefore I sometimes catch myself in finding the longest way of saying something very simple, what could be written in a few sentences end up being a paragraph long.
Other times however I end up going through the entire report and cutting out words when I am over the allowed limit. It is funny how many different ways you can say the same thing.
Back in my day, we’d tinker with the margins and bump the font size up.
ah! how refreshing to see two references to The Elements of Style this week.
) Just proves good writing never goes out of style. going back to my h.s. days – i still try to comb through my writing and weed out the needless words. like your post.
I might be a contrarian here. I wouldn’t take conciseness to rigorously because sometimes the extra words that may seem like clutter actually provide nuances to help the reader alone. For instance, your Bad/Good table works for most situations. For your Good/Better table, I’d probably regard the examples as borderline cases, mainly because the padding doesn’t seem too much enough to distract the reader. But that’s just me, perhaps. Just my twopence worth.
I meant to type “TOO rigorously” – but I think most of you will have spotted that already.
Nicely said. What’s the saying? “Brevity is the soul of discretion”? Something like that.
I have an inner monitoring system. When I am writing something and it’s time to stop, I run out of things to write. I can get it going again, but usually the next part is not as good as the first part.
Great exercise. Thanks. Um..I am afraid to say more..
I know that I do that when I really don’t have a handle on what I want to say. The extra words indicate floundering on my part and with them perhaps I can wade through all the extraneous junk in my head and focus on the basic point. Am I doing it now? Perhaps.
I set myself a limit of words when writing posts for my blog. Then I go through skimming out unnecessary words. I try to avoid short jerky sentences but do not use words as padding becauseI dislike flowery writing. I will re-read my earlier posts now in light of your post to see how successful I have been.
I love the Hemingway six word story, it’s touching and can be interpreted individually which makes it mean more. I don’t know if any of you have ever heard of this guy on twitter? http://twitter.com/#!/veryshortstory
It’s quite a challenge I must admit. If any of you read my blog I’m sure you’ll find I am guilty of very long sentences with too many words!
http://confessionsofashopassistant.wordpress.com/
We need to keep in mind the historical context of the book. It was written in 1918. William Strunk was attempting to get his 99% male college students to write in a manner he personally considered manly. “Vigorous writing” meant manly writing in Edwardian times.
Strunk grew up in high Victorian times and in the post-WWI “modern” Edwardian age the old style of writing and speaking was considered florid, effeminate, and pretty useless. Authors such as Bulwer-Lyton, who once had been incredibly famous, were now to be ridiculed not emulated.
This doesn’t mean abandon all sense of beauty or personal style. There’s a reason people authors such as Dickens, Austen, Dumas, and Tolstoy remain popular. It’s the beauty of the writing, coupled with truth. Strunk threw the baby out with the bathwater.
“From in the midst of the maelstrom” should be trimmed — to “From the midst of the maelstrom” which is beautiful, powerful, melodious. I want to read more. Hacked down to “From within the storm,” is pretty boring, albeit “manly” sounding. I want to close the book and go to bed.
Also, people need to keep in mind “Elements of Style” (1918) didn’t catch on until 1959, when Strunk’s former student, EB White (the author of “Charlotte’s Web”), revised and enlarged it. Ironic, isn’t it.
Wow, thanks for that bit of context. I favor a maximal type of prose myself (though spare prose can be nice too) and am a great fan of the likes of Dickens and Hardy, who I guess may be the types Strunk was rebelling against. I have a special place in my heart for big sprawling books with long, full sentences. Still, when it comes to the types of errors S&W cite as given above, I think the advice remains sound; there’s no point in saying “this is a subject that does X” when you could say “this subject does X.” Because many of their suggestions are suggestions that can be put to good use by those whose purpose is to write prose that is nice and tidy, chances are good that Strunk and White are editors whose work will appear here again.
This is probably the best comment I ever read in a long time about Strunk & White.
Anyone interested in comparing their current S&W version to Strunk’s solo 1918 original, can find the original online at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style.
I make it natural for my blog you can comment when there is something wrong
I have to go along with Sophia’s thoughts here. One’s writing should be natural. If we were to write in the style recommended in 1918 I think we’d be boxing ourselves in.
If it’s concise you want, then try twitter.
Strunk’s version of the Gettysburg Address:
We think we are here to dedicate this Gettysburg battlefield to those who fought for our eighty-seven year-old “free” nation, but we can’t, because their deeds were more important than our words. Instead, let’s resolve to retain and promote our freedom.
Since it has been brought to my attention that I use to much repetition, I have noticed a lot of extra words that I illiminate when editing my work.
True! Although lengthy words usually sound poetic but sometimes too much is just bad composition. I usually do this sort of things (guilty!) and when I read what I’ve done it doesn’t sound smart at all. Just makes me feel like I’m a trying hard writer. LOL. Thank you for this!
Great! I’ll try to make it! (Bad?)
Great post! Thanks for sharing…
I’ve read the same advice “On writing” by Stephen King (translated in Greek). I was surprised and troubled: what is more than necessary? Anyway, I remember and try to follow it each time I write although I like complicated phrases.
I’m not sure I necessarily agree that this is always true. In fiction, when you aim for efficiency over everything else you writing might come across as lacking soul or passion.
Which sort of fiction would you rather read:
It is a warm cloudless Sunday afternoon in July. Michael is sat on a bench next to a duck pond eating an ice cream. He bought the ice-cream from the kiosk in the park.
Or
Michael looked up and smiled as he felt the warmth of the July sun on his face. This was his favourite way to spend a Sunday afternoon, sat on his favourite bench in the park, watching the duckpond sparkle in the sunlight and eating home-made ice cream from the kiosk
The first gives you the same information but which would you rather read? Sometimes people forget that writing is an art. Personally I think that a balance must be struck between efficiency and passion. I post book reviews on my blog and have criticised some books for being over-written.
In non-fiction, essays etc I certainly agree that efficiency should take precedence. I hate appeals to emotion in academic texts, it gives the impression of a lack of substance.
Who’da thunk I’d get so much feedback on Strunk and White?! I may have to revisit this topic next week after doing some more research of my own. In a nutshell, I don’t think Strunk is advocating paring your prose down to nothing. The guideline relies on that pesky subjective qualifier “needless.” I don’t think that means we have to strip what we write down to its bones. You can write beautiful, descriptive, lengthy prose and still adhere to the principle at hand. Strunk is advocating (or I in my interpretation of Strunk am advocating) merely paying close attention and working to edit out filler words that add no meaning or valuable description.
For example, one might write the short bit “Joe gazed into a sky that was gray with the smog of a dying city.” If you change it to “Joe gazed into a sky gray with the smog of a dying city,” you lose a couple of baggage words and actually make the sentence a little more poetic. In other words, the omission here isn’t omission for the sake of being pedantically concise but is in fact in the service of the directness and beauty of the image the sentence paints.
I reckon that the reason we add extra words is definitely to sound more formal.
Yes!
I find when I have to fit my writing into a small amount of space (200 words, or three pages, or something like that), it often improves my writing. But there comes a point when everything gets too crammed together – so the trick is to find the balance, I think.
Whew – hope I don’t use too many words here. Wonderful suggestion for a writing exercise Daryl. I’m glad to see a focus on Daily Post about writing well, and not just writing. While I don’t claim to be an expert, I sometimes cringe at the writing I see on other blogs. Some of the FP’d blogs have compelling topics, which I suspect is why they are chosen, but are poorly written. I know I need to improve my own writing too, which is one reason that I don’t post daily. I spend time on everything I write and strive to avoid posting drivel. Good writing takes work and time. Bravo to you and I look forward to seeing more from you on helping we bloggers improve our writing.
My formal writing lessons ended in high school English class, which apparently was deficieint in Strunk and White, so I guess I better start reading them!
I do understand the concept of writing concisely. Excessive word baggage can potentially confuse the reader. I do, however, disagree with the notion that all such verbiage is indeed unnecessary. There are only a limited number of ways to convey a thought clearly. if we limit ourselves to only the most succinct options, it is quite possible (if not an absolute certainty) that our writing will become dull and repetitive. The same thing can happen if we always “go round Robin Hood’s barn” rather than taking the short path. We need to use a balance of the two to achieve interesting writing. So while it may be possible to say “because” rather than “the reason why is that,” it may not always be the best choice.
I don’t think what you’re saying here is incompatible with the idea of omitting needless words. Sometimes, you do need even words that are ornamental, etc., to pull off a style you’re trying to adopt. That pesky word “needless” is awfully hard to pin down.
I do think that “the reason why is that” is almost always going to be weaker than “because” (or some other variant) unless you’re putting the words in the mouth of a character for whom that sort of speech is natural and possibly significant.
Es una buena sugerencia, “omitir palabras innecesarias” pero…ahí va el pero:
Hay idiomas que gustan de la retórica, ejemplo el castellano, otros son prácticos creo, el inglés incluso alemán y ruso; otros dulces o armoniosos al oído tal vez como el francés, el portugués.
Es bueno ser lacónico, en otros casos requiere más expresiones.
Estos tiempos están desvirtuando los idiomas, incluso por medio del Internet, ni que decir de los modismos.
Here’s a translation of oportunidadextraneg’s comment (as a small public service from me for non-Spanish speakers: and I’m going to embarrass myself doing this, of course):
“It’s a good suggestion, “omit needless words” but … here’s the but:
There are rhetorical languages such as Castilian, others practical-thinking (?) like English, Russian and even German, [while] others sweet and harmonious to the ear such as French [and] Portuguese. It is good to be laconic [concise?], [while] in other cases require more expressions. These times [including by way of the Internet] are distorting languages, not to mention [never mind?] idioms.
(I know it’s a very bad effort at translation…)
This also was the method i remember being taught. May i leave you with this? How many of us took more than usual consideration to this method when responding. I beleive there is an art to it.
I understand what you are going on with this. I actually write somewhat formal because I was taugh like that. English is my second language and I was a middle level student back then an my teacher was crazy about details and of that. She wanted us to write properly since she believedthe English now was being too much shorten.
There’s also the reason of us needing Enghlish for our possible future jobs so she wanted us to be able to write a letter or speaking up without making a fool’s figure.
Because I like to read in english I managed to soften my writing but when I don’t remember an expression or don’t know how to write I go arround with words till I manage to say what I want. Mostly comes up somewhat formal. But it doens’t sound to bad.
Well, for my piece of mind I didn’t had that kind of assignment to do. Thank heaven, I think I would have frustated myself silly doing it.
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I try to write sentences using no more than 16 words. I do a lot of SEO copy writing where sentences need to use keywords and phrases. Short, appropriate and relevant is key!
An example of word over-kill in my opinion http://www.gigajam.com