Revising Approaches — Part 1

Is This Word Needed?

When sociologist Howard Becker was asked to teach a writing course for graduate students, he said he was stumped. So he developed a pattern of displaying a paragraph or two of student-submitted writing on the overhead projector (remember those?) and holding his pen above each word, one at a time. “Does this need to be here? Is this word crucial to the meaning?” he would ask the class.

In this way, he and his students discovered that most writing can be improved, not by adding words, but by taking them out. Dr. Becker reported that the class reduced one Methods paragraph to a single sentence and concluded it was clearer and greatly improved.

The less sure we are about what we’re saying, the more words we use to say it.  Removing the “extra” words reduces the noise, boosting the “signal” of the message we are trying to communicate. A powerful reinforcing feedback loop emerges: The clearer my writing → the clearer my thinking → the clearer my writing.

Cut the Clutter

Two ways to help cut the “clutter,” as journalist William Zinsser calls it, and discern the real meaning hidden amid all those extra words are these.

First, ask a lot of your verbs. Your verbs can create momentum in your writing if they are strong, vibrant, and action-oriented. Simply reducing the number of “to be” verbs can help focus your attention on the breadth and variety of more interesting verbs you can invite into your writing. (Passive-voice verbs can be useful. “Smoking is not permitted here” sounds more authoritative than “I don’t permit you to smoke here,” but use the passive voice cautiously, not as your default sentence construction.)

Second, attend to prepositions. We academics tend to string prepositional phrases in series, and every prepositional phrase carries with it a noun, and soon we have paragraphs of nouns threaded together with little preposition words and plenty of is’s and are’s and precious few action verbs to keep the thought moving forward.

Increasing verb impact and decreasing preposition frequency both help excise extra words, ensuring that the words remaining powerfully convey your message.