How to Cut the Fat Out of Online Writing
Most online reading is actually skimming and scanning. So to grab and hold our readers' attention, we can't afford to waste words. The trick to writing lean on our blogs and websites is to keep the meaning and cut the rest. Here's how.
- Create meaningful titles and subheads.
- Lead with your main point.
- Keep paragraphs short.
- Turn any series into a bulleted or numbered list.
- Put items in a list in parallel form.
- Don't be afraid to use I, you, and we.
- Stick to the active voice (most of the time).
- Use the imperative when giving tips or instructions.
- Highlight or link key words and phrases.
- Remove irrelevant information and repetitive details.
- Delete meaningless modifiers.
- Ignore any of these tips rather than write something rude, crude, or unclear.
Do these guidelines hold true for all forms of online writing? No. Not if your primary aim is to entertain rather than inform. But if you're writing to make a point, try getting right to the point.
More About Cutting the Clutter:
There's a Word for It
What do you call a word that can convey opposite meanings depending on how it's used? A word such as sanction, which can mean either "allow" or "prohibit." Or screen, which can mean "conceal" or "show."
In our Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms, we call this two-faced creature a Janus word--like the two-headed Roman god.
At least that's one name for it. Depending on your source for language lore, a self-contradictory word is also known as enantionymy, antilogy, contronym, contranym, autantonym, auto-antonym, and contradictanym.
You see, in the fields of grammar and rhetoric, there's always a word for it. And often more than one.
For instance, do you know the term for . . .
- . . . a question that's tacked onto the end of a declarative sentence, like this: "At least we tried, didn't we?"
That's called a tag question. Or, if you prefer, a question tag. - . . . the substitution of a more offensive word or phrase (such as "coot"
or "geezer") for a nicer one ("old gentleman")?
That would be a dysphemism--the opposite of euphemism. - . . . a word or phrase that appears to qualify the words both before and after it--as in, "Instructors who cancel classes rarely are reprimanded"?
This ambiguous construction goes by the name squinting modifer (also known as a two-way modifier or a squinting construction). - . . . a noun (such as jeans or doldrums) that appears only in the plural and does not have a singular form?
Try plurale tantum--a Latin phrase meaning "plural only." - . . . a text that deliberately excludes a particular letter of the alphabet (such as Ernest Wright's Gadsby--a story of more than 50,000 words that not once uses the letter e)?
That's called a lipogram--from the Greek for "missing letter."
How often will you have an opportunity to use any of these terms? Probably not very often. All right--never. Unless, like me, you're in the habit of pestering friends and colleagues with questions that begin, "Do you know the term for . . . ?"
More About Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms:
- Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms
- Top 24 Grammatical Terms That We Should Have Learned in School
- Top 20 Figures of Speech
- Top 20 Rhetorical Terms That We Never Learned in School
Image: Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways and of beginnings and endings, was customarily depicted with two heads looking in opposite directions
Learning to Read the 100 Most Important Words*
Rhetorician I.A. Richards (1893-1979) called them the most important words for two reasons:
- They cover the ideas we can least avoid using, those which are concerned in all that we do as thinking begins.
- They are words we are forced to use in explaining other words because it is in terms of the ideas they cover that the meanings of other words must be given.
(How to Read a Page: A Course in Effective Reading, With an Introduction to a Hundred Great Words, W. W. Norton, 1942)
Amount, Argument, Art, Be, Beautiful, Belief, Cause, Certain, Chance, Change, Clear, Common, Comparison, Condition, Connection, Copy, Decision, Degree, Desire, Development, Different, Do, Education, End, Event, Examples, Existence, Experience, Fact, Fear, Feeling, Fiction, Force, Form, Free, General, Get, Give, Good, Government, Happy, Have, History, Idea, Important, Interest, Knowledge, Law, Let, Level, Living, Love, Make, Material, Measure, Mind, Motion, Name, Nation, Natural, Necessary, Normal, Number, Observation, Opposite, Order, Organization, Part, Place, Pleasure, Possible, Power, Probable, Property, Purpose, Quality, Question, Reason, Relation, Representative, Respect, Responsible, Right, Same, Say, Science, See, Seem, Sense, Sign, Simple, Society, Sort, Special, Substance, Thing, Thought, True, Use, Way, Wise, Word, Work
All these words carry multiple meanings, and they can say quite different things to different readers. For that reason, Richards' list could just as well have been labeled "The 100 Most Ambiguous Words":
The very usefulness which gives them their importance explains their ambiguity. They are the servants of too many interests to keep to single, clearly defined jobs. Technical words in the sciences are like adzes, planes, gimlets, or razors. A word like "experience," or "feeling," or "true" is like a pocketknife. In good hands it will do most things--not very well. In general we will find that the more important a word is, and the more central and necessary its meanings are in our pictures of ourselves and the world, the more ambiguous and possibly deceiving the word will be.
In an earlier book, The Making of Meaning (1923), Richards (and co-author C. K. Ogden) had explored the fundamental idea that meaning doesn't reside in words themselves. Rather, meaning is rhetorical: it's fashioned out of both a verbal context (the words surrounding the words) and the experiences of the individual reader. No surprise, then, that miscommunication is often the result when the "important words" come into play.
It's this notion of miscommunicating through language that led Richards to conclude that all of us are "learning to read" all the time. "Whenever we use words in forming some judgment or decision, we are, in what may be a painfully sharp sense, 'learning to read'" (How to Read a Page).
* In case anyone's counting, yes, there are actually 103 words on Richards' top-100 list. The bonus words, he said, were meant "to incite the reader to the task of cutting out those he sees no point in and adding any he pleases, and to discourage the notion that there is anything sacrosanct about a hundred, or any other number."
More About Words:
Wisdom Speaking Eloquently
Over 400 years ago, an English curate named Henry Peacham characterized the figures of speech as "wisdom speaking eloquently." Through the play of language, he said, "the singular partes of mans mind are most aptly expressed, and the sundrie affections of his heart most effectuallie uttered."
In The Garden of Eloquence (1577, revised 1593), Peacham defined and illustrated 184 figures of speech, many of which also appear in our Tool Kit for Rhetorical Analysis. But whereas Peacham's favorite sources were Cicero and the Bible, we've plucked our examples of eloquence from more contemporary gardens.
- Anadiplosis, for instance, is illustrated by Yoda in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menance:
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.
- Anaphora by Senator Barack Obama, in his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:
It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.
Hope--hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! - Chiasmus by a commercial jingle:
I am stuck on Band-Aid, and Band-Aid's stuck on me.
- Epanalepsis by the character of Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean:
The man who did the waking buys the man who was sleeping a drink; the man who was sleeping drinks it while listening to a proposition from the man who did the waking.
- Hypophora by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940:
You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
- Parechesis by rapper Eminem:
And just know that I grow colder the older I grow
This boulder on my shoulder gets heavy and harder to hold
And this load is like the weight of the world. - Synecdoche by late-night growler Tom Waits:
And the swizzle stick legs
jackknifed over naugahyde stools and the
witch hazel spread out over the linoleum floors,
the pedal pushers stretched out over midriff bulge,
and the coiffed brunette curls over Maybelline eyes
wearing Prince Machiabelli, Estee Lauder, smells so sweet. - And understatement by the Black Knight, after having both of his arms cut off, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
It's just a flesh wound.
Before visiting some of the rarer specimens in our garden, you may want to begin your tour with our Top 20 Figures of Speech. No, there wasn't a contest, and as far as I know these 20 figures haven't won any medals at the Chelsea Flower Show. But I trust you'll find some familiar names--and still hear "wisdom speaking eloquently."
More About the Figures of Speech:
George Carlin's Essential Drivel
Words fascinated George Carlin. From his early routine on "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" to the inventory of euphemisms in "Airline Announcements," language--especially bent or abused or "soft" language--was his recurrent theme. "By and large," he once said, "language is a tool for concealing the truth."
Carlin, who died of heart failure on June 22, clearly knew a thing or two about claptrap--and twaddle, poppycock, balderdash, gobbledygook, and drivel. In fact, "drivel" was the word he used to describe his own writings--"Good, funny, occasionally smart, but essentially drivel" (Napalm & Silly Putty, Hyperion, 2001).
In his short essay "Count the Superfluous Redundant Pleonastic Tautologies," Carlin didn't include all 200 of the common redundancies in our own list. But he came close to it:
My fellow countrymen, I speak to you as coequals, knowing you are deserving of the honest truth. And let me warn you in advance, my subject matter concerns a serious crisis caused by an event in my past history: the execution-style killing of a security guard on a delivery truck. At that particular point in time, I found myself in a deep depression, making mental errors which seemed as though they might threaten my future plans. I am not over-exaggerating.
I needed a new beginning, so I decided to pay a social visit to a personal friend with whom I share the same mutual objectives and who is one of the most unique individuals I have ever personally met. The end result was an unexpected surprise. When I reiterated again to her the fact that I needed a fresh start, she said I was exactly right; and, as an added plus, she came up with a final solution that was absolutely perfect.
Based on her past experience, she felt we needed to join together in a common bond for a combined total of twenty-four hours a day, in order to find some new initiatives. What a novel innovation! And, as an extra bonus, she presented me with the free gift of a tuna fish. Right away I noticed an immediate positive improvement. And although my recovery is not totally complete, the sum total is I feel much better now knowing I am not uniquely alone.
(When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? Hyperion, 2004)
Behind Carlin's comic observations lay the sharp linguistic insights of a self-described "disappointed idealist."
"Question everything you read or hear or see or are told," he recommended in a 2004 CNN interview. "Question it. And try to see the world for what it actually is, as opposed to what someone or some company or some organization or some government is trying to represent it as, or present it as, however they've mislabeled it or dressed it up or told you."
We won't be sending flowers, of course. Now that Carlin has passed on, kicked off, checked out, made his exit, gone to glory, cashed in his chips, and joined the great majority to sleep the big sleep, we won't even say nice things about him. Too late for that.
It's a perverse fact that in death you grow more popular. As soon as you're out of everyone's way, your approval curve moves sharply upward. You get more flowers when you die than you got your whole life. All your flowers arrive at once. Too late.So we'll just say, thank you, George. Thanks for all the drivel.
(Napalm & Silly Putty, Hyperion, 2001)
More About George Carlin:
- Soft Language
- Accumulation
- "How George Carlin Changed Comedy," by Richard Zoglin (Time magazine, June 23, 2008)
Image: George Carlin, "Life Is Worth Losing" © georgecarlin.com
What Is a Good Writer?
"A good writer is simply one who says all he wants to say, who says only what he means to say, and who says it exactly as he meant to say it."
(Ferdinand Brunetière, Honoré de Balzac, translated by Robert Louis Sanderson, J. B. Lippincott, 1906)
More About Becoming a Good Writer:
A Revival of the Teaching of English Grammar
For some years I have been confident that a revival of the study of English grammar was certain to come. There are two reasons for my confidence. The first is the importance of the subject itself. The second is the fact that some years ago the pendulum of educational thought began to swing away from the teaching of grammar, and its return is as certain as the operation of natural law.The speaker was Dr. Oliver Farrar Emerson, author of The History of the English Language and an assistant professor of rhetoric and English philology at Cornell University. The occasion was the monthly meeting of the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club in Ann Arbor. And the time was November 1896.
Emerson's talk (printed in the March 1897 issue of The School Review and available here) offered a three-point plan for "this newer grammatical teaching"--something "more accurate, more interesting, and more effective" than the "dry and deadening processes of memorizing rules and definitions, and the unreasoning application of set formulae."
What's remarkable about Emerson's report is its relevance to grammar instruction in our own time, which (thanks largely to back-to-basics pressure from legislators) is again enjoying something of a comeback.
In Emerson's day, the science of linguistics was in its infancy. Now it's a major field of study with several flourishing branches. And yet linguistic research has had only a modest effect on the teaching of grammar in our schools. Many of today's most popular writing handbooks are direct descendants of the grim prescriptive guides of the 19th century. And while I wouldn't describe anybody's teaching as "dry," "deadening," and "ineffective," some of our students just might.
With the revival of the study of English grammar in our own time, Emerson's recommendations may be worth dusting off and reexamining. Here are the key points of his proposal.
- The Nature of Language and the Principles of Its Development
In the first place, English grammar should be taught with reference to the nature of language and the principles of its development. That this has been done to any considerable extent in the past, no one who knows the subject intimately will seriously maintain. The teaching of English grammar has usually been little more than the presentation, in the least interesting form, of certain dogmatic statements laid down by various so-called grammarians--I will not take their names in vain, for I am sure they have been well-meaning, though often ignorant men. . . . In fine, the teaching of our mother tongue has been almost, if not quite, untouched by the newer discussions and discoveries of the science of language. . . .
The teaching of English grammar should take account of the fundamental principles of linguistic development. The teacher should know and emphasize the fact that grammar is the description of a more or less unstable and changing medium of expression; that language is not hedged about by any divinity, but is merely a human institution, subject to human infirmity and human caprice; that what is grammatically correct in one age may not be in the next; that changes proceed along certain lines and under certain influences, a full understanding of which could not fail to make the study of grammatical relations more interesting and more effective.
- The Historical Development of the Language
In the next place, the subject should be taught with respect to the historical development of the language. . . . In the first place, the teaching of historical English grammar would show a reason for what is now simply asserted. Present usage depends on past usage. It is neither set up by schoolmasters nor is it inherently best. It is a development under various influences. Now I am sure that much of the dryness of the subject would disappear if some attempt were made to explain how things came to be. . . .
More than all else, a proper regard for the history of the language must show the importance of separating the usage of different periods, and the impossibility of explaining the usage of one period by influences belonging wholly to another era. English grammar in the schools of today should be a description of the usage of this century, as distinct in many respects from that of the seventeenth or even eighteenth century.
- The Spoken Form of English
Not only should English grammar be taught with reference to the nature of language and the history of English, but it should also take account of the spoken, as distinct from the written, form. . . .
The best reason for the recognition of the spoken, as distinct from the written, language is in the enlivening and vivifying of grammatical teaching which would result. Instead of memorizing numerous rules and definitions, and applying them in a more or less lifeless manner to the conventional written form, the pupil could be taught to observe speech about him, to study its forms as the scientist studies other natural phenomena. I cannot believe that English studied in this way need be less lacking in interest and pleasure than the study of the other phenomena in nature and of life.
You'll find the complete text of Emerson's address at The Teaching of English Grammar.
More About English Grammar:
Ten Pros on Prose
For tips on how to improve your writing habits and sharpen your prose, visit with these 10 authors from our series Advice From the Pros.
- Natalia Ginzburg: On Being a Great Small Writer
"I try to capture the reader immediately," said Ginzburg, "to enter into communication with him, and not bore him. Above all, I want to be understood." - Doris Lessing on the Compulsion to Write
When asked by Bill Moyers why she continued to write, Doris Lessing said, "I have to. It is what I do." - Norman Mailer on Writers and Writing
Mailer claimed that he learned "the power of restraint" from Ernest Hemingway. "He showed what a powerful instrument English is if you keep the language simple, if you don't use too many Latinate words." - H.L. Mencken on the Writing Life
"Words are veils," Mencken once wrote to a critic. "It is hard enough to put into them what one thinks; it is a sheer impossibility to put into them what one feels." - Joyce Carol Oates: "Don't Give Up"
Even for an author who's as prolific and accomplished as Joyce Carol Oates, writing does not always come easily. - George Orwell's Rules for Writers
In his essay "Politics and the English Language," Orwell offers six elementary rules as an antidote to what he perceived as "the decay of language" in his time. - Grace Paley on Writing
Poet and short-story writer Grace Paley said that she was so "neurotically anti-authoritarian" that she couldn't read a cookbook instruction "without the furious response: 'Is that a direct order?'" - James Thurber on Writing and Editing
For Thurber, good writing meant re-writing: "I have never written more than a dozen pieces that I thought could not have been improved. Most writers who are any good have this belief about their work." - Kurt Vonnegut on Writing With Style
The author of Slaughterhouse Five encourages us to "Keep it simple" and "Have the guts to cut." - Writers on Writing: E.B. White
"English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment, and education," said the co-author of The Elements of Style. "Sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across a street."
Time Out for Present Participles
In one respect, present participles are pretty simple, straightforward constructions. Whether laughing or crying, they're formed by adding -ing to the base form of a verb. No exceptions. Present participles, you see, are the only verb forms in English that are completely regular.
But after that, things get a bit more complicated.
For one thing, there's that misleading word present. In some cases, the present participle (in this example, rising) does seem to indicate present time:
She looks at the rising sun.But when the tense of the main verb changes to the simple past, the time of the "present" participle at least seems to change right along with it:
She looked at the rising sun.And when the main verb is in the future tense, the "present" participle again tags along:
She will look at the rising sun.So one thing to keep in mind is that the present participle really doesn't keep time at all. That job is reserved for the main verb.
By now you've probably noticed another peculiarity of the present participle. Though it's constructed by adding -ing to a verb, it often works like an adjective. In our examples, the present participle rising modifies the noun sun.
But that's not always the case.
Consider how the -ing words are used in this quotation, variously attributed to Confucius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vince Lombardi, and American Idol veteran Clay Aiken:
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.Both falling and rising function here as nouns--specifically, as objects of the preposition in. When a verb plus -ing does the job of a noun, it's no longer called a present participle. Suddenly it's a gerund. (I prefer to think of it as a verbal with a multiple personality disorder.)
Then again, when a present participle is combined with a form of the auxiliary verb to be, it functions as a verb:
The price of oil is rising.This construction is called the present progressive tense.
But that's enough about participles, gerunds, and progressives--at least for the present. If you're interested in learning more, please visit these pages:
How to Become a Good Re-writer
"When I say writing," observed novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, "O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind." Indeed, says Joyce Carol Oates, "The pleasure is the rewriting."
Too often in schools the injunction to "write it over again" is delivered (or at least perceived) as a punishment or dull chore. But as the professionals remind us, rewriting is an essential part of composing. And in the end it truly can be the most rewarding part. As Tolstoy said, "I can’t understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again."
Unfortunately, most of us don't have time for the "over and over again" part. So when you have to make do with a once (or twice) over, consider making use of these three rewriting tools and techniques.
- Revision Checklist
The strategies in this 10-point list will encourage you to look again at what you've written to see how it can be improved. - Revision System
Allena Tapia, the About.com Guide to Freelance Writing, offers a seven-step revision system to help us produce "flawless work." - Checklist for Editing Paragraphs and Essays
You'll find that this 12-step editing program fits nicely into Allena's revision system.
Finally, keep in mind the words of E.B. White: "The best writing is rewriting."