May 20, 2014 / Beginner

Declutter Your Prose: Three Phrases to Avoid in Your Posts

Unnecessary phrases, be gone! Here are three quick ways to copy edit your writing and declutter your prose.

On The Daily Post, we want to help you improve your writing and offer concrete advice to craft clear, crisp prose. As an editor on WordPress.com, I read many, many posts each day on our platform; it’s worth pointing out words and sentences that might detract from your writing.

Here are three ways to copy edit your writing and declutter your prose:

1. In this post, I will explain . . .

When we draft posts, we naturally dump our inner monologues onto the page. And that’s good — that’s the beauty of free writing and cranking out first drafts: we have material we can later rework, cut, and move around.

Before you hit “Publish,” scan your intro for phrases like “In this post, I will explain…” or “Today, I will write about…” and similar phrases. In your drafting process, just let go and type. But when you’re revising and editing, excise these phrases that initially helped your train of thought, but are no longer needed:

In this post, I want to add my thoughts to the ongoing discussion about why Jill Abramson was fired from the New York Times. I read an interesting piece in the New Yorker by Ken Auletta about why . . .

2. Sorry for my absence, but . . .

You don’t need to apologize to your readers for not blogging for a while. We all have jobs and families and priorities — if you disappear for several months, that’s normal! But when you decide to get back into it, just dive in. There’s no need to explain yourself (unless, of course, you want to tell that story).

Write your next post as if no time has passed, and avoid wasting your introduction on secondary details on where you’ve been. You might lose readers in that first paragraph, which is where you’re supposed to reel them in! Some visitors, then, may not reach the real meat of your post.

In short: get to the point.

3. This post is in response to . . .

The community on The Daily Post is pretty awesome — we’re glad to see hundreds of responses to prompts each day and so many writing and photo challenge submissions each week. It’s easy to fall into a habit when you publish a similarly formatted post each week and reuse phrases like “This post is in response to this week’s photo challenge, On the Move,” or “Here is my answer to Blog Your Block, this week’s writing challenge on The Daily Post.”

Think of varied, creative ways to introduce your challenge submissions, or weave links to the original challenge posts naturally in your text. Instead of . . .

Here is a shot of my work of art. This post is my answer to this week’s photo challenge.

. . . try this alternative, in which your prose is the star of the post:

We all stumble upon examples of art, each day. We might be walking to work, on our morning run, or rushing through a subway station. The works of art that are unexpected and mundane are often the most beautiful, as you can see . . .

In the example above, your own voice and ideas are the focus, rather than the bulky mention and link to the original challenge.

We hope these three quick tips help to declutter your writing!

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  8. I love this! I’ve been looking for ways to improve my blog writing skills and these tips help. Thanks very much! I’ll keep these in mind.

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  12. hmmm .. all three phrases seem to squeeze themselves into post too often. if I think about it, apologizing to an unknown audience seems al little weird, they don’t even know what my expectations to my blog are ;).
    thanks for the tips!

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  16. Even as a longtime copy editor, I still find myself including extra phrases that don’t add anything. Then I go back later and take them out. Lol.

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  18. The second one on your list has been one I’ve been
    guilty of posting. I’m relieved to know it
    wasn’t necessary. I had been
    worried about deleting that type of thought.
    Thanks for advising against it.
    It’s freeing.
    Isadora

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  19. I try to weave in #3 all the time, I always feel so generic when I say something like “in response to…” as if I am answering some essay question and I hate when I include that in my writing. I would never talk like that so I try to keep it out. Thanks for the tips!

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  22. Definitely things to keep in mind. Thanks for the tips! I think I still have trouble getting to the point when it comes to my posts.
    Live and learn… though it would be nice to learn a bit faster.

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  23. Such good advice – we don’t make disclaimers for our stream of consciousness on other social media [where perhaps we should…] so why on our blog?

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  30. Haven’t blogged in a while so naturally, I was guilty of number 2. Time to edit that post! I think number 1 happens a lot too (in fact it was included in this same post)! Thank God I read this post before I published mine. Thank you!

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