Omit Needless Words

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White is required reading for anyone who wants to be a competent writer.

The most famous message from this book, and the message that stuck with me for more than twenty years since I first read this 85-page booklet, is Strunk's commandment to "omit needless words."

If you find yourself struggling with a writing task, go through your text and omit needless words. Then make another editing pass and do it again. And again. This technique forces you to strip out all of the irrelevant stuff that distracts you and your readers, and it boils your message down to its cleanest and clearest form.

And I've always loved the irony of how Strunk omitted needless words when he said "omit needless words." How cool is that? If he said, "remove all extraneous words" or "get rid of any words that aren't completely necessary" nobody would remember the phrase.

Sometimes three words is exactly enough.

There Are Times When "Omit Needless Words" Doesn't Work

William Strunk's omit needless words technique is one of the best ways to tighten up and clarify your writing. However, there are instances where it fails as a writing strategy.

First, some authors write in beautiful, expansive prose. Rest assured, no one would read Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather or Jane Austen if they had omitted all needless words from their novels.

Second, excessive use of this technique may bias your word choice towards overly complex, SAT exam-style words. While this can cause your writing to sound more authoritative (especially if you're writing a PhD thesis), there are certain writing tasks where this type of word choice may compromise your credibility with your audience.

The expression "omit needless words" itself gives us a perfect example. If you were writing an essay on pop culture, directed at a young audience, would you want to say something like "omit needless words"? Does anybody under the age of thirty even use the word "omit"?

There are times when writing can get too tight.
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PS: Here is To The Lighthouse as written by Strunk:

"Let's go to the lighthouse."
"Let's have a dinner party and serve Boeuf en Daube."
[Ten years pass.]
"Let's go to the lighthouse."
"I've finished my painting."
The End.

Another Benefit of Omitting Needless Words

The easiest way to cure your writing of passive voice is to print out your draft, go over every single sentence, and ruthlessly omit needless words.

Look at these two sentences:

1) The food was cooked by Dan.
2) Dan cooked.

Most of you would never commit the heinous crime of writing sentence #1. I've simply used an obvious example of passive voice to show how convoluted sentences melt down into direct statements when you edit with an omit needless words mindset.

A side benefit of omitting needless words in sentence #2: You can eliminate the redundant word food, since it is already implied by the word cooked.

An Easy Way to Find Inspiration

I've repeatedly discussed the many advantages of using the omit needless words technique in your writing and editing.

This technique can also help you find inspiration.

Are you struggling with an article or blog post where your thoughts just aren't crystallizing? Give it a good working over using this technique. Strip out every single needless word. And then go back once more and strip out all the words that might be needless.

This process clears away all the fluff between you and your best ideas. It helps you get to the fundamental essence of your thinking. Even your most awkward and confused writing contains worthwhile ideas and thoughts--they're just hidden behind all the needless words. Strip them away and your best ideas will be sitting there, right out in the open.

And then you can get started writing again.

Truer Words Were Never Written

"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 his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
--from The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White

This paragraph not only contains some of the most profound writing wisdom ever uttered, it is itself an example of exceptional writing. Note the parallelism in the second sentence, the varied sentence structure, and the total lack of extraneous words. Note how compelling and persuasive the argument sounds.

Go through your writing and omit needless words. It is the easiest and most efficient way to improve any written work. Watch how your writing becomes more crisp, your descriptions become more clear and your arguments become more powerful.

And then watch how your audience grows.

Four-Fifths the Words, Four Times the Clarity

Our muscles slaked their lactic acids and we stopped our thirst with long draughts of sweet water still almost as cold as the mountain stream from which we had drawn it at lunchtime.

The sentence above, one of several doozies from Paul Gruchow's book The Necessity of Empty Places, tripped me so badly that I decided to write an entire post about it.

Nobody's perfect. If one or two sentences like this survives in your manuscript, fine. You'll confuse your readers, but they'll forgive you. However, if you leave a few dozen sentences like this in your book, your readers won't forgive you. This kind of writing--sloppy, wordy, convoluted--communicates active disdain for your audience.

Let's fix it.

Our muscles slaked their lactic acids: Let's start with the obvious mistake here: lactic acid is a mass noun. It isn't pluralized.

Less obvious: this clause dangles without context. The reader must contemplate entire the sentence to understand what Gruchow means by Our muscles slaked. Which means the reader has to read the sentence twice to understand it. Yes, nature writing is supposed to be relaxed and meandering, but this goes too far.

draughts: This word grows more and more archaic by the day. Use drinks.

still almost as cold as: Omit needless words. Replace with as cold as.

the mountain stream from which we had drawn it at lunchtime: This author is trying to obey the rule to never end a sentence in a preposition--when his sentence doesn't end in a preposition! Replace with the mountain stream we'd drawn it from at lunchtime.

Finally, please add a comma somewhere--anywhere--to allow your readers to breathe.

Here's a tighter version of the sentence, with four-fifths the words and four times the clarity:

We stopped our thirst and slaked our muscles with long drinks of sweet water, as cold as the mountain stream from which we'd drawn it at lunchtime.

One Perfect Turn of Phrase

1) Leave out all unnecessary words.
2) Omit needless words.

These two sentences have nearly identical information content. They both articulate an extremely useful concept. And yet nobody remembers the guy who wrote the first sentence.

Whenever you write an insightful phrase that sounds like it might have a good ring to it, be alert to the possibility that you might be one or two word changes away from the perfect turn of phrase. Keep massaging the text. Play with the word choice and word order. You might turn a good phrase into the perfect phrase.

We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.
--Benjamin Franklin

Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
--Oscar Wilde

Although prepared for martyrdom, I prefer that it be postponed.
--Winston Churchill

One phrase, perfectly turned, can make an article, a book or anything else you've written instantly memorable. More importantly, a phrase like this can make your writing marketable.

This is the sort of thing that can make a writer's career.

Overwriting

Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.
--Strunk & White, The Elements of Style

Which authors do you treasure for their direct, plainspoken writing? And which authors write in prose so dense and dandified that you can't even get through their books?

In fiction, the rules on overwriting are unwritten and flexible. But in non-fiction, the rules are strict and clear: If you want readers to take the time to digest your ideas, never obscure them with fancy, ornate prose.

If you're one of the few writers who realize they have an overwriting problem, the solution is simple and painfully familiar to regular readers of this blog: Omit needless words.

Go over your text and cut out every word you possibly can. And then go through it again and cut out more. Then, go over it one more time and cut out still more words, just for good measure.

The process can be painstaking, but the cure is worth it.

Wordiness

There are infinite ways to write badly, but at least one type of bad writing is easy to correct. Read the following:

Soon, he would come to be sorry for the things that he had said.

A painfully wordy sentence like this is easy to fix--just cut it down. The result will be magnitudes better:

He would regret his words.

This sentence is crisp, forceful and concise. Every word has an important role. And unlike the monstrosity above, this sentence builds suspense.

Don't punish your readers and make them slog through your writing. Omit needless words!

Never Make Readers Suffer Through Your Prose

But it is that extra step that will put you into meaningful contact with the world of forms and help you begin the journey that will end with your being a fully enfranchised and informed citizen of that world.
--Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence

I know it seems like a bad joke, but the sentence above comes from a book about the art of good sentence writing, and it's one of the worst sentences I've ever read. Let's figure out exactly what's wrong with it.

First, omit needless words. This author clearly forgot the most important rule of good writing.

Second, how about some punctuation? I'd challenge anyone to read this thirty-nine word monstrosity aloud without suffocating. Let your readers breathe.

Third, eliminate unnecessary modifiers. Phrases like meaningful contact and fully enfranchised and informed probably sound intelligent to this author, but in reality they are textbook examples of lazy writing. Find a single word that does the job.

Fourth, this sentence contains far too many prepositional phrases. Phrases like that will put you into, with the world of, begin the journey that, and with your being do nothing but confuse and mislead the reader. Good sentences express one or two clear and tightly-phrased ideas, not several convoluted and wordy ideas.

Fifth, stop showing off. Pretentious language, long sentences and pseudo-intellectual jargon don't communicate your ideas, they communicate disdain for your audience. Never make your readers suffer through your prose.

Three Techniques to Fix Complex Writing

Our last post discussed and how many writers find it all too easy to confuse complex writing with intelligence.

But how do you fix complex writing, especially if it's your natural habit to write this way?

I have three suggestions:

1) Buy an inexpensive voice recorder and use it as a tool to capture your thoughts in their most basic form. Spoken language is almost always more simple and direct than written language. Use this to your advantage.

2) When struggling over complex written passages that you'd like to strip down, ask yourself, out loud, "what am I trying to say?" Then, explain it, out loud, to yourself (or to a friend) and transcribe what you just said. This technique gets you to the fundamental essence of your ideas.

3) Finally, go through your writing with a fine-toothed comb and omit needless words. Do this repeatedly and relentlessly. Convoluted thinking and convoluted writing quickly melt away under this technique.

Too many of us believe complicated sentences and a showy vocabulary suggest a deep and penetrating intelligence. In reality, they suggest the opposite.

Nominalizations

You might not have heard the fancy term nominalizations, but you probably use these nouns when you write. Think of them as empty nouns that give no information about who did what.
--The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier by Bonnie Mills Trenga

I'll confess, until I read Bonnie's excellent book, I'd never heard of nominalizations either. And yet they almost always lead to terrible writing. See for yourself:

* The flashing of the cameras was distracting to the model.
* The collection of donations began yesterday.
* The directing of the movie started in earnest at the end of last year.
* The awarding of the Medal of Honor was a turning point in his life.

Awful, right? In each example the subject is phrased awkwardly (e.g., the directing of the movie, the collection of donations). Far better to describe things more directly:

Filming started in earnest at the end of last year.
We began collecting donations yesterday.

So, how do you uncover and eliminate nominalizations from your writing? Easy: just look for the word of--it's almost always present in a nominalization--and then rephrase using simpler and more direct wording.

Or, here's an even simpler solution: just go through your writing and omit needless words. You'll automatically catch and destroy phrases like the collection of, the taking of and the flashing of.

Pronouns In the Feminist Era

A question from a Spanish-speaking reader struggling with a common English language challenge in the era of gender equalism--whether or not to use the masculine pronoun:

When you say "someone" or "a person" can change ___ mind and you want to put a possessive pronoun, what do you use? Do you use "its"? In Spanish we would say "una persona puede cambiar de opinión" but the possessive for "someone" or "a person" would be "su" that can refer to both.

You've stumbled onto a key problem with English in the modern era. The traditional solution was to use the male pronoun and male possessive pronoun:

A person can change his mind.

You should give the customer a refund if he argues with the manager.

In the feminist era, however, these sentences, while grammatically correct, are considered sexist. Feel free to continue using the masculine pronoun if you wish, but be aware that some readers may consider it tone deaf or even insulting.

If you'd prefer not to offend half or more of your readers, consider these alternatives:

1) Use the plural pronoun, which is gender neutral in English:

People can change their minds.

You should give customers a refund if they argue with the manager.

2) Use a mix of male and female possessives. Use one gender in the first example, the other gender in the next:

You should give the customer a refund if she argues with the manager. However, a person can change his mind.

3) Use the phrases "he or she" or "his or her." This solution is a breach of Strunk's maxim to omit needless words, but it can function in a pinch:

A person can change his or her mind.

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This post is gratefully dedicated to Rhiannon Laurie.

Passive Voice Has Been Ruthlessly Exterminated From Your Writing

If you didn't get the awful joke in the title of this post, or if you aren't quite sure what passive voice is, here's a simple example of an active voice construction reworded into passive voice:

1) Bob wrote the article.
2) The article was written by Bob.

In the first sentence, the subject (Bob) did something. In the second sentence, the subject (the article) had something done to it. That's the essential difference between passive and active voice.

Note also that the first sentence is much tighter and clearer than the second sentence.

Passive voice is a frequent sin of bad writing. If your writing tends to be dense, complicated or convoluted, it's highly likely that you have a habit of thinking and writing in passive voice. Strip down your sentences into simpler forms, omit needless words, and train yourself to recognize passive voice.

And then ruthlessly exterminate it from your writing. We'll talk more about passive voice in the next few posts.

The Problem of Ego

Your ego is the biggest obstacle between you and a successful writing career. It prevents 95% of writers from ever putting their work out there.

How? By manifesting in the form of that little voice we all have in the backs of our heads--that voice telling us our ideas are rubbish and our writing sucks.

Everyone has this voice, and most writers break down under it.

Effective writers, however, learn to harness their egos. After all, what is it that drives us to make our work better? What drives us to make that extra editing pass through our work, to tighten our phrasing and omit needless words just one more time?

Our ego! It is essentially an act of the ego that drives us to make the work we put out there as polished and as perfect as it can be.

Oh, the irony. You can't afford to listen to your ego when you're creating your work. And you can't afford not to listen to it when you're perfecting your work.

Choosing a Writing Style

What style of writing best fits your writing task?

Do you need your material to be found by Googlers? Then you'll need to write a keyword-laden title and seed the first few sentences of your article with still more keywords.

If you want searchers to find your content and then actually read it, then you'll need write keyword-laden sentences that don't read like keyword-laden sentences.

Do you have a strict word limit? Then turn up your omit needless words dial to 11 and strip out everything that doesn't absolutely need to be there. Say what you need to say as tightly and economically as possible.

What if you have no limitations on the length of your piece? Then you can consider adding colorful and even tangential stories to illustrate your thoughts.

Are you writing for Gawker Media? Then I'm sorry for you, because all of your writing will have to be in snark mode.

This is just a fancy way of saying "write to your audience." Always think about the best way to say what you want to say while staying within your constraints and guidelines.

Avoid Complex Sentence Structure

What was different in the '80s--what ushered in the era of superstar corporate raiders and then made it disappear forever--were the rise and fall of Michael Milken, and the hard knocks education of large institutional investors.
--From Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism by Jeff Gramm

The otherwise exceptional book Dear Chairman gives QWT readers yet another example of how complex sentences and complicated writing inevitably hurts readers.

The sentence above is grammatically correct, although it sure doesn't seem so. In fact, it's the correctness of the grammar that makes it read poorly. Readers hiccup and lose their rhythm when they get to "were" after the second dash.

Why "were"? Because that verb's subject is plural: "Michael Milken" and "the hard knocks education of large instituional investors" were what was different in the '80s.

So, no problems with the grammar, but the sentence still needs help. It's confusing, it's unwieldly, and it reads like there's a grammar error even though there isn't. Do not fling sentences like this at your readers.

How can we fix it? Simplify it, make it direct... and omit needless words. Like this:

What was different in the '80s? The rise and fall of Michael Milken, and the hard knocks education of large institutional investors. This was what ushered in the era of superstar corporate raiders--and then made it disappear forever.

Avoiding Intensifiers

Our last post discussed the writing crime of using intensifier words (such as so, very, more, really, truly, etc.) together with binary descriptive words (pregnant, bankrupt, unique and so forth).

Who am I kidding? The real crime is using any of these intensifier words at all. No writer worth a damn clutters up his sentences with flaccid words like very, totally, absolutely, definitely, completely or highly.

These words demonstrate nothing more than a writer's limited vocabulary.

Omit all needless intensifiers. Use one fitting word, not two or three ill-fitting ones. Your prose will sound forceful and direct, and your readers won't underestimate your intelligence.

"Which" Hunting

Looking for an easy way to tighten up your writing? Eliminate phrases like which is, that is and who is. These are almost always needless words you can omit.

Avon Products, which is one of the world's largest direct marketing companies, hired its new CEO away from Johnson&Johnson.

The words which is are unnecessary. Delete them.

Avon Products, one of the world's largest direct marketing companies, hired its new CEO away from Johnson&Johnson.

Another example:

Pablo Picasso, who was an early innovator of the Cubism movement, was the 20th Century's most important painter.

Here, who was is the offending phrase. Nuke it.

Pablo Picasso, an early innovator of the Cubism movement, was the 20th Century's most important painter.

The corrected sentences have more cadence and more force. They'll keep your readers reading.

Earn Readers With Well-Crafted Sentences

He was a good chairman who loved his job; he might have been better if he had loved it less.
--from Alex Berenson's The Number

This sentence, about the 1990s-era Securities and Exchange Commissioner Arthur Levitt, is an excellent example of good writing. Three reasons why:

1) Parallelism: Note how He was a good chairman pairs with he might have been better and then note how loved his job pairs with loved it less. These parallel structures add a distinct cadence to the sentence, making it a pleasure to read.

2) Reversal: The reversal is a simple technique where the author states an idea in one form and then restates it in opposing form. The second part of the sentence above is an excellent example of a reversal. This device, if used well, violates readers' expectations and grabs their attention.

3) There are no needless words: Okay, there might be one needless word: we could omit "if" and rephrase the second half of this sentence to he might have been better had he loved it less, but this is a minor improvement. This is a beautiful, forceful and tightly-written sentence.

If you want to attract readers, sculpt a brilliant sentence like this every few paragraphs. They'll come.