Clutter!

As a writing geek, I, at fifteen years of age, have been reading through The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White as well as On Writing Well by William Zinsser...recreationally.  That said, be prepared in this post to take out your two-inch thick, steel-rimmed, bridge-taped glasses.  You'll need 'em.  :)

So...clutter.

I have a lot of clutter in my writing.

I'm the person who abuses ink and spills words out needlessly, probably more so than Mr. Anonymous-Author down the street.  Mark Twain says to James Fenimore Cooper, "Eschew surplusage," and, in those two words stand the greatest bit of advise that I could give to any editor.  Chunks of description could go; dialogue doesn't respect my reader's time; action is for the sake of adrenaline, not for the sake of the plot, and all these things must go, go, GO.  Vas.  Shoo.  Self-defenestration.

Even beyond that, though, I could still chop even more away from my writing.  Don't believe me?  Allow me to quote the first of aforementioned books:

"Vigorous writing is concise...many expressions in common use violate this principle.

• "The question as to whether / Whether

• "There is no doubt but that / No doubt

• "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

• "Her story is a strange one / Her story is strange

• "The reason why is that / Because

"The fact that is an especially debilitating expression.  It should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs.

• "Owing to the fact that / Since (because)

• "In spite of the fact that / Though (although)

• "Call your attention to the fact that / Remind you (notify you)

• "I was unaware of the fact that / I was unaware that (did not know)

• "The fact that he had not succeeded / His failure

• "The fact that I had arrived / My arrival

"...Who is, which was, and the like are often superfluous.

• "His cousin, who is a member of the same firm / His cousin, a member of the same firm

• "Trafalgar, which was Nelson's last battle / Trafalgar, Nelson's last battle"

Crazy, isn't it?  Reading that section made me want to go into all my documents and search for these extraneous phrases, deleting them with editing gusto.

If my point isn't made yet, let me also quote the second of the two aforementioned books:

"Clutter is the official language used by the corporation - in its news releases and its annual report - to hide its mistakes.  When one big company recently announced that it was "decentralizing its organizational structure into major profit-center businesses" and that "corporate staff services will be realigned under two senior vice-presidents," it means that it had a lousy year.
"...Clutter is the language of the Pentagon throwing dust in the eyes of the populace by calling an invasion a "reinforced protective reaction strike" and by justifying its vast budgets on the need for "credible second-strike capability" and "counterforce deterrence."  How can we grasp such vaporous double-talk?
"...I could go on quoting examples from various fields - every profession has its growing arsenal of jargon to fire at the layman and hurl him back from its walls.  But the list would be depressing and the lesson tedious.  The point raising it now is to serve notice that clutter is the enemy, whatever form it takes.  It slows the reader and makes the writer seem pretentious.
"Beware, then, of the long word that is no better than the short word: "numerous" (many), "facilitate" (ease), "individual" (man or woman), "remainder" (rest), "initial" (first), "implement" (do), "sufficient" (enough), "attempt" (try), "referred to as" (called), and hundreds more."

So what to do about these pieces of clutter when editing?  William goes on to say:

"I would put brackets around any component in a piece of writing that wasn't doing useful work.  Often it is just one word that got bracketed: the unnecessary preposition that is appended to a verb ("order up"), or the adverb that carries the same meaning as the verb ("smile happily"), or the adjective that states a known fact ("tall sky scraper")."

This information has been priceless for me, and I hope you too will get to utilize these tips to their fullest!

Write on...cleanly!

Clove

P.S. Okay, okay, I admit.  I'm not as geeky as it may seem.  The Elements of Style, I got from a friend for my birthday/Christmas gift; she knows me well.  ^_^  On Writing Well, I found when I was looking through a bunch of books to sell online; I pulled it out of the box and skimmed through it and am now engrossed.  :P