Five quick tips to write with power

11/10/2012

Use a word axe to chop away waste.

By Darin L. Hammond
Only have a few minutes to polish your nearly late project? Utilize the time to build up your language by cutting down.

Yes, trimming away the fluff and filler will strengthen your writing, even if the project ends up being a little short. I offer some brief tips for using those last 10 precious minutes.

Combine and condense sentences without using the word "and." In scanning, if you spot several identical words in two consecutive sentences, they need to be wrapped up in one.
Cut wordy phrases that are unnecessary or implied. Rather than saying "In order to accomplish the task," just say "To accomplish the task." Avoid phrases like "In conclusion" because they do nothing - we can see on the page that you are concluding.
Chop place holders like "it is," "which are," "that are," and "there are" because they don't say anything. Reword.
Eliminate repeated ideas. The same information twice is unnecessary in written language. Don't even summarize in most cases - appropriate in verbal presentations, but not written.
If you can write a sentence with fewer words, then do. Anytime you can say more with less, you are more powerful in written communication.

Hope the quick ideas are useful.

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Comments

steve

11/15/2012 1:56am

Yes sentence construction is very important, checkout my blog at
http://www.definingwords.blogspot.com/2012/10/words-of-support-and-encouragement.html
feel free to leave a comment

Darin L. Hammond link

01/01/2013 5:31am

Steve,

Thanks for your comment, and I will certainly check out your post. Thank you for sharing and taking the time to read.

Darin

Joe link

02/06/2013 12:27pm

I've noticed that my most efficient writing always seemed to occur in the midst of writing a great deal of wasted words and sentences. By that I mean that I would write an entire long paragraph or two and then, as it feels natural, I would write a concluding/summary sentence or two at the end of that last paragraph and... well, I realize that those last two sentence were really all I needed.

But, I wouldn't have got to that point and written those sentences until AFTER I had gone through the process of writing the entire two paragrpahs first. It would have taken far more than twice as long to not write anything and just stare at the page until I came upwith the perfect ttwo sentences.

Half of writing is editing and trimming. That even the case with emails: takes me forever to write a short and clear and efficient email. Long emails are so much easier to write. But short ones.

Yep, there's my two bits.

Darin L. Hammond link

02/13/2013 10:03pm

You know, I find the same thing, only I encounter brief passages here and there that contain my brief, powerful message and I have to trim away to get down to the core, the essence of the writing.

Don't feel bad though. You know the story of Michelangelo and sculpting? He would look at a huge bulbous chunk or block of marble, explore it until he saw the image inside, and then he said he would "carve away the excess." That is a butchered version of what was actually said.

I tell my writing students to write at least 1/3 more than the page count they need for their papers (I teach college writing). This will allow them to do the cutting and butchering they need to make the paper decent.

The students, of course think I'm crazy.

Hey, Joe, I responded to your other comments in these blogs, but I don't think I made the response directly to you, so you probably won't be notified. If you need help finding those responses, let me know.

Also, Joe I wanted to invite you to my G plus community "Cognitive Science and Writing." I think it would be up your alley: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/100746062204320903342. Maybe I'll give you a call in the next couple of days.

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Five quick tips to write with power

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