Haven’t Mentioned This in a While

Redundancy is when you unnecessarily repeat yourself. Conciseness is when you’re not redundant. (Terseness is when you take out too many words) Good writing is concise. No unnecessary words. This applies especially to expository writing. If you’re writing a love letter or a poem, it’s okay to not be concise. But when you want to explain something, be concise.

Here’s an example of not being concise:

The [watch and clock] tax was repealed after a campaign by the Clockmakers’ Company, and promptly replaced by Income Tax, which U.K. citizens still pay to this day.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-clockmakers-museum

You could write, “…which U.K. citizens still pay” or you could write, “which U.K. citizens pay to this day.” Both have exactly the same meaning, and each way of writing concisely has more punch than the original.

So write punchily!

PS—here’s a picture of a timepiece designed to minimize that tax.

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“Be clear” is one of my five gold rules of technical (and any expository) writing. Here’s a good example of what I mean. Is eWeek saying that the updates have critical flaws?

Apple Patches Critical Flaws in iOS 12.1, macOS 10.14.1 Updates

You have to read the article to find out. Inside the article they got it better:

Among the updated releases are macOS Mojave 10.14.1, iOS 12.1 and watchOS 5.1, fixing high-impact flaws…

We hear of flaws being in operating systems, and we also hear of fixing things with an update. They could have put “with” right before “Updates” in their headline. Presto! Ambiguity removed!

They could also have changed the word order:

Apple Updates iOS12, macOS, and watchOS with Patches.

For that matter, whatever comes after “with” is unnecessary:

Apple Updates  iOS12, macOS, and watchOS

That last suggestion isn’t as dynamic, perhaps, but shorter is good. Being concise is another of my rules. And it gives room to mention all three updates in the headline by getting rid of all those numbers. Want longer anyway? How about:

Apple Updates  iOS12, macOS, and watchOS, Fixing Critical Flaws

Sorry—I couldn’t find a comic to illustrate this. Maybe my next post will have a comic.

I’ve been seeing this a lot lately. You don’t need “event” here! Harrumpf.

Seems weather forecasters feel that they sound more important (or professional or esoteric) if they say “weather event.” But “storm,” “rain,” “tornado,” “high winds,” or whatever, all are more precise and convey more information with fewer words.

What about “impact” here? It hadn’t happened yet for “impact” back in the 1800’s, but in English, a lot of words can be either a noun or a verb (we have “a hit,” and “to hit,” for example), and many words can go either way. Back then, “impact” was still a noun.

I should add that a lot of grammarians don’t particularly like this feature of English, particularly when we already have perfectly good nouns and verbs in the lexicon. For instance, “to office” is pretty bad.

So remember the second rule of expository writing: be concise.

The time has come to write about fluff again—I ran into a comic on the subject. We curmudgeons also call fluff redundancy, wordiness, and unnecessary verbiage. Probably some saltier terms, too. Fluff is the antithesis of conciseness, one of my gold rules for good writing.

I’ve featured this gal in Jump Start before. Several times, actually; that one was just a sample.

So when you write, look over what you wrote. (You always proofread, don’t you?) Do you see any words that you could delete without changing the meaning? Delete ’em! Your readers will thank you.

Actually several times over the past several years. (Search on redundan or fluff to see more.) Extra words go contrary to my rule about good expository writing, to be concise. So I suppose I don’t really need to mention it again, but this Wrong Hands comic has some good examples of what not to do. Besides, repetition is the mother of learning, right?