Eliminating Clutter

Every year I seek to teach my students to eliminate clutter in their writing, and every year I encounter a renewal of one variety of clutter or another.

"Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds--the writer is
always slightly behind." --Wm. Zinnser
"Dandelion" by Leo-seta is licensed under CC BY 2.0

This year my students appear to believe verbs must be written in the progressive tense. They introduce quotations with "The writer is saying that..." or analyze text with "This quote is meaning that..."

This year's epidemic takes its place next to the annual creators of clutter: excessive wordiness, unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, long words, and ponderous phrases and euphemisms.

We can do so much better without the clutter, namely the "-ing" progressive verbs and the heap of extra words they require. Below is a student example from a recent writing assignment about a poem we read in class:

"This quote is showing that the narrator usually is going with others because he's living his life one step at a time to try and not hurt anyone."

That's THREE progressive verbs among the various clutter. He employs 28 words, but few of them convey his ideas.

And what did the student include that he doesn't need?

"This quote..."  (Awkward transition) Students want to connect back to the previous quote or evidence. If their sentence makes a clear point about the previous sentence, they do not need this awkward transition. Cut it.

 "...is showing that..."  (Progressive verb #1) Rather than consider the appropriate verb to demonstrate what the writer "is showing," students resort to a stock phrase that adds nothing to the sentence. Clutter. Cut it.

"usually"  (Adverb) No need to qualify the statement. This is clutter. Cut it.

 "...is going..."  (Progressive verb #2) Changing this to "goes" saves one word, but even a single word not doing work is clutter. Cut it.

"...because he's living his life..."  (Progressive verb #3) Do we need to remind people that the speaker of the poem is alive? Cut it.

"...one step at a time..."  (Cliche) Clutter. Cut it.

"...to try and..."  (Redundant) More clutter. Cut it.

 So what is left of this sentence? Not much. Behind the clutter, this writer has produced little substantive thinking about the literature. Without the clutter, we get this:

"The narrator goes with others to not hurt anyone."

Nine words! Success. While the new sentence lacks a complete analysis, it provides a clean starting point for the student to engage in deeper thinking about the poem. Readers can also see the author's claim and understanding of the text he quotes.

The next step for this writer includes a stronger understanding of the speaker (beyond the basic "narrator") as well as a stronger verb than "goes with." He might also sharpen the discussion of what it means "to not hurt anyone."

Once writers eliminate the weeds (clutter), they can focus on saying something valuable.