Wasted Words

There is a story about Mark Twain. He is writing a rather hefty message to a friend. He ends the note by saying, "If I'd had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter." There is far more truth than comedy in that saying (and it's pretty funny to begin with).

I've talked before about a 15-word limit in sentences, but there is more to it than mere numbers. The heart of the matter is why sentences are so long. Read a newspaper or a history textbook. The sentences that make you want to beat yourself unconscious are the ones that try to say too much.

Textbooks try to cram entire lessons worth of information in a handful of pages, requiring very dense sentences. They tend to sound like, "Between the years of A and B, the nation of C, ruled by the D empire under Emperor E, Feuded with the countries of F, G, and H, mostly because of a difference of ideology, with C believing in the I religion and the rest of the countries believing in the religions of J, K, and L, respectively." This is a perfectly valid sentence grammatically. It's also 58 words. That's almost quadruple the rule. No human can comprehend this sentence fully without reading it slowly, carefully, and several times. It would be far more effective to break it up into several sentences that are digestible on one reading.

I think it is painfully ironic that newspapers are such heinous offenders of overburdening sentences. Working on newspapers was the major reason for making me aware of wasted words. The problem is that although newspapers don't waste words (or at least shouldn't), they still try to say too much. Newspapers always have sentences like, "[Quote by a Person], said Person, who has this job at some place and has some personal stake in the subject." It's like they somehow think it is good writing to cram in mostly worthless information about people just to prove that it's valid.

Newspapers and textbooks at least have an excuse for their ineffective writing style: they are condensing their information. The real problem I have is with people who can fill a page and not say anything. I think it is the surest sign of amateurism (at least a rough draft; at best an intermediate writer) to use words that have no meaning.

English is an amazing language. We have more words than any other language on Earth and seem to make new ones every day. With all these words, we can express one thought in countless ways. Although they are equal in meaning, they are not equal in effectiveness. Compare the following sentences: "There could only have been two possible options to choose from." "There were two options." They mean the same thing, but the latter sentence took seven fewer words. All I did was take out redundancies. I will admit that the first sentence does explain certain nuances that the second one does not, but the context of the rest of the scene would paint the same picture.

Redundancies are a significant part of wasted words, but not the only part. Perhaps the worst offender is the prepositional phrase. In general, a prepositional phrase is a group of words that you can put anywhere in, or remove from, a sentence without changing the meaning. They add more information, but it is not always needed. "I drove to work in my car." The "in my car" part of the sentence is a prepositional phrase. It is also worthless. If I'm driving, you can assume it is in a car. Even if I specified the type of car, it is not necessary unless that goes to explaining something else (like a Ferrari indicating wealth).

There are a few methods I use to avoid wasting words. One of them is to trust my gut. If I read a sentence or say it out loud and start getting bored or tongue tied, I know I need to delete it and try again. Another is to challenge myself to a game of Can I Write That With Fewer Words? One of my favorite methods is to pretend that you're talking to a person who is still learning English. What is the simplest, shortest, least confusing way that you can express an idea? If you can write that clearly, you can be sure that you will not be wasting any words.