Improving Clarity In Writing: Cutting Unnecessary Words
How to be a "very" good writer and speaker
Writing-related Twitter accounts and “copywriting gurus” say “you need to cut unnecessary words from your vocabulary.” Which is true. But what they don’t say is which words to cut and why, and in which situations.
Being clear and concise is essential in every part of life. BowTiedSalesGuy also discusses cleaning up language. For example, "you should" and "you need to" are bad. There are concerns in both readability and psychology. We’ll focus on the former here.
In general, you’d start cutting the standard filler words. Words like: maybe, usually, generally, very, but. Or start with redundant adverbs: quickly, quietly, heavily, etc. Industry jargon and acronyms are also good candidates for the cutting room floor.
Chad writing doesn’t waste its time with maybes. If you write a sentence like “I think we can move this along quickly, because maybe she’ll like it, I don’t know, it’s very open to interpretation”... WRONG. Take ownership of your opinions. Don’t wuss out by hedging your bets.
Drill down to the essentials. Which words are moving things along? What’s doing the heavy lifting in your sentences?
It’s common advice for fiction writing that every sentence needs to move the story forward. If something doesn’t advance the plot, setting, or characters, then it likely needs to go. Readers will move on to another book if they get bored. This applies to non-fiction too. Sentences should flow together, moving the reader from one word to another, all the way to “the end.”
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