Sep 1, 2011 / Language & Grammar

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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  1. 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!

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  2. 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.

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    1. 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.

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  3. 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.

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  4. 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…)

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  5. 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.

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  6. 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. 😉

    Kiss Kiss
    AM001

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