Each time we use more words than we need, or a long word when a shorter one will do, or an adjective or adverb that means the same as the word it modifies (leisurely saunter), we drive readers crazy. And then we drive them away. Bill Luening of The Kansas City Star offers 20 tips for tighter writing.

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Writing tight

In general, prefer short words, sentences and paragraphs. Simplify your prose. Search your copy for redundancies and clutter. Throw out every word you can without ruining the sentence's meaning or rhythm.

Clutter, author William Zinsser tells us, is the disease of American writing. Each time we use more words than we need, or a long word when a shorter one will do, or an adjective or adverb that means the same as the word it modifies (leisurely saunter), we drive readers crazy. And then we drive them away.

When you write, assume that your reader would rather be doing something else than drinking in your mellifluous prose. Then assume "something else" is exactly what he'll do if you serve him copy that is flabby and unclear.

Tips for tighter writing

  1. Use an outline every time you write. Not the elaborate Roman numeral job taught in Ms. Quahog's English class. Just a brief list of the most important points arranged in the logical order for telling.
  2. Challenge every word. Write fast, edit slow. During the final edit, challenge each word. If it's not necessary, throw it out. Such as not and out in that sentence. If it's unnecessary, toss it.
  3. Use the active voice. Joe slapped Nefferriti is shorter, more vigorous and more clear than Nefferriti was slapped by Joe.
  4. Identify redundancies, pleonasms (true facts) and tautologies (widow woman). How? Learn to recognize them. Memorize them. Then zap them from your copy.
  5. Focus on prepositions. If you write a sentence with more than two prepositional phrases, you may be stuffing the sentence. Consider recasting it to eliminate a phrase or make it into two sentences. Unless it destroys the rhythm, turn prepositional phrases into modifiers or possessives. The stories about Kaczynski becomes The Kaczynski stories. The house owned by Mrs. Smith becomes Mrs. Smith's house.
  6. Stay conversational. To an extent, try to write as you speak. The closer you come to your speaking rhythms and natural word choices, the clearer and more engaging your copy will be. Of course, written English is always more formal and thoughtful than spoken language. Listeners will forgive a speaker's mistakes and meanderings and "and-uhs." But a reader forgives a write nothing. You have, after all, thought out each word, have you not? At least that's what the reader thinks.
  7. Hammer adjectives and adverbs. We write about people and things, so good writing is made of nouns and verbs. When you run across an adjective or adverb, see if you need it. Eliminate those that carry the same meaning as the noun or verb: mumbled unclearly, unhappy frown.
  8. Keep sentences short. Good writers average about 14 to 17 words a sentence. That doesn't mean all of their sentences are 14 to 17 words. Nor does it mean you should abandon the occasional long sentence. Listen to the sound of the sentences by reading them aloud. If some are short and some are longer, that's good. From variety comes rhythm. From rhythm comes reader interest and pleasure.
  9. Avoid expanded phrases. This point in time is an expanded phrase. Its equivalent, now, is a fine, short word. Choose the fine, short word and substitute it for expanded, bloated phrases.
  10. Watch for Latins and Greeks. After the Normans invaded England, Latin words became preferred by the country's royalty, clergy and scholars. Latin words were, and still are, more formal and indirect than their dirt cheap Anglo-Saxon equivalents. On the other hand, Anglo-Saxon, the honest language of peasants, packs a wallop. In Anglo-Saxon, a man who drinks to excess is not bibulous but a drunk, a man who steals is not a perpetrator, but a thief, and a man who is follically-impaired is not glabrous, but bald. Direct language is powerful language. Then comes Greek, the language of science. Science is nice. Science is good. But using complicated scientific words can make copy dense and difficult to understand. Moreover, it can make it sound pretentious. Of course you cannot -- and should not -- drop all words of Latin or Greek derivation from your work. Many times they will be perfect. But first, try to think of a down-home Anglo-Saxon substitute.
  11. Replace words that end with the suffixes -ality, -ation, -ence, -ization, -ize, -ocentrism and -wise.
  12. Beware overuse of subordinate clauses, especially ones that begin a sentence.
  13. Read your stuff aloud. We write for the inner ear, not the eye. If you're writing long, you'll hear it (and likely be signaling for oxygen). If you can find a sucker, have him read your stuff to you.
  14. Keep your language specific. Don't write "They had a stormy marriage that included many physical confrontations." Write "During their marriage, she punched him, choked him and once kicked him down the stairs."
  15. Describe with care. Description is good, but remember your Hemingway: good writing is architecture not interior design. When you describe, be specific.
  16. Avoid bloated phrases and creeping nouns. Re-cast phrases such as "mental problem area" or "precipitation activity." Watch for them in any use of the words "situation," "field" or "condition." Don't let a robbery become a crime situation, or a lawsuit become a legal situation. Don't write that people work in the legal field or medical field when they are lawyers or doctors. Don't tell readers about war conditions or weather conditions when war or weather do the job.
  17. Make sentences positive. As Strunk and White recommended, rather than writing "He was not paying attention to her" write, "He ignored her." Readers want to know what happened, not what didn't happen.
  18. Eliminate expletives. Rewrite any sentence you begin with "There is" or "It is." They waste space, are wordy and usually meaningless. Recast a sentence such as "There is no reason why he left home" to "He left home for no reason."
  19. Use no qualifiers. "May," "somewhat," "a few," "rather," "very," "little," "quite." Remember, again, Strunk and White: Qualifiers suck the blood out of prose.
  20. Leave out adverbs, when tense carries the meaning. "Now" in the sentence "now playing at the Midland Theatre," for example, is superfluous.
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