#34 "Omit Needless Words" (How to Write with Concision)

Wordy writing sucks.

Don't write like you speak.

Trim your lamp to keep it burning.

Less is more.

"Omit Needless Words."

The latter sentence is found in Chapter 13 of William Strunk and E.B. White's timeless The Elements of Style, a celebrated writing handbook with such a devoted following that it was actually turned into a musical.

The aforementioned advice is sometimes derided as merely a stylistic choice. After all, not everyone likes short, stripped-down sentences. Not everyone wants to write like Earnest Hemingway from In Our Time.

However, don't confuse concise writing with terse writing. Terse writing features short sentences and sometimes has a cryptic, detached style. Often the writing is devoid of ornamentation. Sometimes it's missing details all together.

Concise writing is efficient writing. Don't dumb things down, but don't dress them up needlessly. "Omit needless words" means to remove words you don't need, usually because they create redundancies, say things that are already implied, or generally clog up the writing with "yackity-yak" phrases or over-written passages.

For example, take this wordy sentence:

"The main point is that caterpillars completely change and transform into insects known as butterflies."

It's not long, but it contains needless words. A more concise version would be:

"Caterpillars transform into butterflies."

The meaning has not been changed at all. The pointless words have been removed. It's more efficient.

Now, you might find that, after stripping away needless, implied, and/or redundant phrases like "The main point is that," "completely change," and "insects known as," the sentence seems too terse.

Feel free to return to the sentence and add genuinely important details:

"After weaving a chrysalis around its body, the caterpillar remains hidden for three weeks, only emerging after it has transformed into a butterfly."

This is not a short sentence, but it's pretty concise.

Cut the fluff. Trim the fat. Avoid "blah, blah, yackity-yak" phrases that weigh down the sentence.