Cut the clutter

Newspaper articles are too long. This is Michael Kinsley’s argument in his article “Cut This Story!” published in the Jan/Feb. edition of The Atlantic. Newspapers should tell a story and cut excessive context information that does not add anything except “unnecessary verbiage.” Kinsley does have a point here. Writing does benefit from cutting out the clutter. Let’s just assume the following passage from “Cut This Story!” were not mere parody:

“People have to look at the sizable gains that have been made since stock and options were granted last year, and the fact is this was, in many ways, a windfall,” said Jesse M. Brill, the chairman of CompensationStandards.com, a trade publication. “This had nothing to do with people’s performance. These were granted at market lows.”
Those are 56 words spent allowing Jesse M. Brill to restate the author’s point. Yet I, for one, have never heard of Jesse M. Brill before. He may be a fine fellow. But I have no particular reason to trust him, and he has no particular reason to need my trust. The New York Times, on the other hand, does need my trust, or it is out of business. So it has a strong incentive to earn my trust every day (which it does, with rare and historic exceptions). But instead of asking me to trust it and its reporter about the thesis of this piece, The New York Times asks me to trust this person I have never heard of, Jesse M. Brill.
Of course this attempt to pass the hot potato to a total stranger doesn’t work, because before I can trust Jesse M. Brill about the thesis of the piece, I have to trust The New York Times that this Jesse M. Brill person is trustworthy, and the article under examination devotes many words to telling me who he is so that I will trust him. (By contrast, it tells me nothing about the reporter.) Why not cut out the middleman? The reason to trust this story, if you choose to do so, is that it is in The New York Times. What Jesse M. Brill may think adds nothing. Yet he is only one of several experts quoted throughout, basically telling the story all over again.

This is too long indeed. The reader has long understood that Mr. Kinsley trusts the NYT but sees no need to trust any unheard-of “expert.” Yet, do we need to know that the author trusts the NYT “with rare and historic exceptions”? Do we really care whether Mr. Brill is “a fine fellow”? Do we need to be told twice (or even trice if we count the phrase “a total stranger”) that Mr. Kinsley does not know Mr. Brill? And does it even make any difference who this stranger is since Mr. Kinsley’s point here is to call into question experts who are simply quoted “to restate the author’s point” and make an article sound more trustworthy? No, and it’s all clutter waiting to be cut:

I have no particular reason to trust Jesse M. Brill. The New York Times, on the other hand, has a strong incentive to earn my trust every day or it is out of business. But instead of asking me to trust it and its reporter, The New York Times asks me to trust Jesse M. Brill.
Of course this attempt to pass the hot potato to a total stranger doesn’t work, because before I can trust Jesse M. Brill’s opinion, I have to trust The New York Times that this Jesse M. Brill person is trustworthy; hence the article devotes 56 words to telling me who he is so that I will trust him. The reason to trust this story, if you choose to do so, is that it is in The New York Times. What Jesse M. Brill may think adds nothing. So, cut him and all the other experts quoted who do nothing but tell the same story all over again and only restate the author’s point.

These 169 words (instead of 250) convey precisely the same message and still allow for playing with the word “trust” if one wishes to do so.
Michael Kinsley ends his article cautioning writers against the “lure of closure – some form of summing-up or leave taking. Often this is a quote that repeats the central point one last time, perhaps combining it with some rueful irony about the limits of human agency.” Good point. Conclusions are for many writers a pain in the back because when they arrive there, they feel they already have said everything they wanted to say. So, how does Michael Kinsley close?

On the first day of my first real job in journalism—on the copy desk at the Royal Oak Daily Tribune in Royal Oak, Michigan—the chief copy editor said, “Remember, every word you cut saves the publisher money.” At the time, saving the publisher money didn’t strike me as the world’s noblest ideal. These days, for anyone in journalism, it’s more compelling.

He closes with a quote by some total stranger, whom I don’t feel any need to trust, and a stuffy reminder how times have changed. Right! Just cut it!


Here are a few tips – without any claim to be complete – how to trim the fat from everyday writing:

Avoid Tautologies

Tautologies are pairs of synonymous words. A moment is brief by nature, and we need just a moment to understand this. The reason that tautologies should be avoided is not because they are redundant. Tautologies simply should be avoided because they are redundant.


Some Adjective/noun combinations are like little roundabouts.


o close proximity
o final completion, final outcome
o free gift
o added bonus
o foreign imports
o frozen ice
o honest truth
o knowledgeable expert
o original source
o usual custom
o advanced planning
o surrounding circumstances
o future plans

Double adjective often belabor the obvious,
o pure unadulterated truth
o frank and honest exchange

and so do some adjective/ adverb or adverb / verb twosomes.
o exactly identical
o entirely eliminate

Double nouns : Never mind, but consensus , e.g., already means being of the same mind
o consensus of opinion
o cash money
o end result
o PIN number (LAN network, estimated ETA, RSVP please)

One conjunctions is plenty.
o and also / and as well
o but however

Tautological pairs just "overexaggerate,"
o each and every
o one and the same
o at about
o full and complete
o few in number
o the reason ... because

and tautological verbs overshoot the mark.
o overexaggerate
o may possibly
o ask the question
o look back in retrospect / refer back
o protrude out
o rise up
o dash quickly
o plan ahead
o circle round
o continue on
o postpone until later
o unite (join, link) together

Avoid empty phrases

• All things considered
• As a matter of fact
• As far as I'm concerned
• because of the fact that
• by means of / by virtue of the fact
• for all intents and purposes
• in a manner of speaking
• In a very real sense
• In the case / in the event
• Something in the nature of
• The point I am trying to make / What I mean to say is that

Avoiding Expletive Constructions
No, expletive constructions are nothing risqué. Expletive constructions are those sentences that begin with there is/are or it is.

There are many tautologies that can make a sentence sound silly. It is these pairs of synonymous words that need to be avoided.
Tautologies, pairs of synonymous words, can make a sentence sound silly and should be avoided.
There is a flock of pigeons that lives in my attic, fluttering around like some obstreperous thoughts in my mind.
The flock of pigeons that lives in my attic flutters around like some obstreperous thoughts in my mind.

Avoid Wordiness

Wordy: The future to come is fully and completely unknown.
Concise: The future is unknown.
Wordy: His discovery was a tremendous breakthrough in the field of economics.
Concise: His discovery was a breakthrough in economics.
Wordy: The politician talked about several of the merits of the new health-care plan.
Concise: The politician praised the health-care plan.

Use the verb instead of a weak noun phrase

Her doll was a lot of comfort to the child when she was afraid at night.
Her doll comforted the child when she was afraid at night.

Jeanny believed but could not confirm that Sam had feelings of affection for her.
Jeanny assumed that Sam liked her.

This dessert has a tendency to collapse when overbaked.
This dessert tends to collapse when overbaked.

I will make a copy of this document.
I will copy this document.

Failed to connect the dots

Sharp and sarcastic as usual, Maureen Dowd commented last week on the president’s statement that Christmas Day’s almost-disaster was not due to “a failure to collect or share intelligence,” but rather to “a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had.” She wonders why everybody was so surprised by the perpetrator’s Yemeni nationality and expresses this in the following paragraph/sentence:
“Even though Russ Feingold, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been pointing out since 2002 that we need to focus on Yemen — ‘It’s the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden and the place where Al Qaeda blew up the U.S.S. Cole and we lost 17 people,’ he impatiently notes — the president said that the intelligence community was caught off guard by the attack planned by the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, even though ‘we knew that they sought to strike the United States, and that they were recruiting operatives to do so.’”
To understand the intelligence conveyed here requires a second (third?) reading – or an intelligence analyst – because the interposed, rather lengthy quote makes it unnecessarily difficult for the reader to connect the information. Less collecting would allow for clearer intelligence. Moreover, the entire sentence becomes so long that the writer easily loses control. Since the sentence begins with even though, another even though clause cannot be tagged on. Not throwing "dots at us like 3-D asteroids" would help avoiding inner disconnection: Russ Feingold, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been pointing out since 2002 that we need to focus on Yemen. “It’s the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden and the place where Al Qaeda blew up the U.S.S. Cole and we lost 17 people,” he impatiently notes. Nevertheless, the president said that the intelligence community was caught off guard by the attack planned by the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, even though “we knew that they sought to strike the United States, and that they were recruiting operatives to do so.”
Terrorism is scary, maybe because most of us can hardly understand what can lead a person to believe that anything is worth it to blow up himself and dozens or hundreds of others. In a highly interesting article about “The Terrorist Mind”, Sarah Kershaw explains that “Paradoxically, anxiety about death plays a significant role in the indoctrination of terrorists and suicide bombers – unconscious fear of mortality, of leaving no legacy, according to a new research.” Not only is the phrase “according to a new research” tagged on helter-skelter but also the explanation of the terrorists’ death anxiety unnecessarily far removed from the phenomenon it attempts to define. A reader will easily fail to understand a sentence when related information or thoughts are not kept together but interrupted by phrases or clauses. It would be much safer to organize the points top to bottom: According to a new research, a significant factor in the indoctrination of terrorists and suicide bombers is, paradoxically, anxiety about death – an unconscious fear of mortality, of leaving no legacy.
Kershaw also points out that people like Ted Kaczynski are an exception because only very few terrorists act alone. “The Unabomber was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, while most terrorist groups weed out the mentally unstable, experts say; they even prefer to select those with higher status for the suicide missions, in the belief that sending those with the most to lose will raise the credibility of their cause.” The two sentences connected here with a semicolon concern two very different concepts, one being a particular person’s mental disorder, the other being a typical terrorist’s status in a group. These two ideas should be clearly separated by a period. Far more confusing, however, is the first part of this quote. While functions to show a difference between two situations, but the Unabomber being diagnosed with some mental condition cannot be compared to groups weeding out the mentally ill. The information about those groups’ preference for mentally stable members should be connected to the second sentence instead: The Unabomber was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Most terrorist groups, however, weed out the mentally unstable, experts say. They even prefer to select those with higher status for the suicide missions, in the belief that sending those with the most to lose will raise the credibility of their cause.
Kershaw then refers to a play by Albert Camus to explain the moral dilemmas a terrorist might face. Camus’s The Just “tells the true story of the assassination by a revolutionary group in 1905 of a grand duke in Russia.” The assassination and its victim here are placed at two different ends, which - although it would have been of utter advantage for the grand duke - makes this statement simply hard to read. What belongs together should be together: It tells the true story of the 1905 assassination of a grand duke in Russia by a revolutionary group.

If words and information are properly connected, the risks that “The intelligence fell through the cracks” (John Brennan, deputy national security adviser) are much slimmer.

An other tea party

Henry James's description of Mr. Touchett's estate ows much of its beauty to the masterly use of parallel structure.

"Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not — some people of course never do — the situation is in itself delightful. … The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country house in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf…. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiar English picture I have attempted to sketch...

The house had a name and a history; the old gentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these things: how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a night’s hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent, and terribly angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell’s wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having been remodelled and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed into the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth) it was offered at a great bargain; bought it with much grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew all its points, and would tell you just where to stand to see them in combination, and just the hour when the shadows of its various protuberances—which fell so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork—were of the right measure." (Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady)

The beauty of parallels

The two red lines are both straight and parallel to each other. That the lines look as if they were bent is a result of the lined pattern in the background that creates a false impression of depth.


In the natural world, seemingly disjunct or opposing forces such as dark and light, female and male, low and high are interconnected and interdependent. They are complementary opposites within a greater whole, move in tandem and maintain a parallel relationship. Whenever one quality reaches its peak it will naturally begin to transform into the opposite quality.

The Roman statesman, philosopher and mathematician, Boethius (480-524 A.D.) explained that the soul and the body are subject to the same laws of proportion that govern music and the cosmos itself. We are happiest when we conform to these laws because "we love similarity, but hate and resent dissimilarity". (De Institutione Musica, 1,1. from Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. p. 31).


Harry Reid recently got into trouble because of his choice of words. A NYT article reports that the Senator from Nevada encouraged B. Obama to run for president because Reid “believed the country would accept Mr. Obama, whose father was black and mother was white.” Surely, we are used not only to politicians who make incoherent statements and maybe bend the truth but also to journalists who add injury to insult. In an ideal world, both good politics and a good sentence require a balance. Unlike before and after a political campaign, however, in a sentence the words before and after and must carry the same "weight" and be congruent. Thus, Mr. Reid endorsed Mr. Obama, whose father was black and whose mother was white.

The NYT reporter continues to compare Mr. Reid’s lapse with Trent Lott’s politically incorrect remarks of 2002. According to the NYT, “In contrast to Mr. Reid’s endorsement of a black candidate, Mr. Lott appeared to endorse the long-past segregationist candidacy of Strom Thurmond” (1/10/10). Because one part of a sentence can be balanced only by another one of the same kind, it is stylistically faulty to compare Mr. Reid’s endorsement (a noun phrase) to Mr. Lott who appeared to endorse (a verb phrase) somebody else. Just like so often in politics, this statement starts out one way and then switches tactics midstream. Someone's endorsement is compared to someone else. Yet, unlike politics grammar asks for consistency and hence the well-balanced information that while Mr. Reid endorsed a black candidate, Mr. Lott appeared to endorse the long-past segregationist candidacy of Strom Thurmond. In contrast to the two senators, the two parts of this sentence move in tandem, although their content is still quite startling. One wonders not only how even somebody like Trent Lott can endorse a “the long-past segregationist candidacy” but also why anybody would want to endorse something “long-past” in the first place. What is “long-past” anyway?

The time of segregation is indeed long past, yet Mike Huckabee seems as eager to play the race card as Harry Reid wishes to drop it. Referring to Marco Rubio, Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Huckabee says that “his race has become a real classical encounter between whether the party is going to be a let’s-be-all-things-to-all-people party or whether we’re going to be a principled conservative party that espouses things out of genuine conviction.” Whether you like it or not, whether is a conjunction indicating a choice and is followed by or. Therefore, the question (or choice) is whether the party is going to be a let’s-be-all-things-to-all-people party or a principled conservative party that espouses things out of genuine conviction. Whether or not this is in any way connected to a candidate’s race is a completely different question.

Examples of parallelism errors from Grammatically Correct by Anne Stilman and how to fix them:

He had always preferred talking to listening, and to give rather than to take advice.
He had always preferred talking to listening, and to give rather than to take advice.
(The list now consists of four gerunds instead of a mix of gerunds and infinitives)

The lecture was long, a bore and uninspiring.
The lecture was long, boring and uninspiring. (Adjective – Adjective – Adjective)

She told him to get to the hotel by six o’clock, that he should check with the concierge for messages, leave his luggage at the front desk and to wait for her in the lobby.
She told him to get to the hotel by six o’clock, (to) check with the concierge for messages, (to) leave his luggage at the front desk and (to) wait for her in the lobby. (The same wording – here an infinitive – must be used for each element in a list. The word to can be used either before each element or only before the first.)

The consultant objected to the proposal because the costs would be too high and that the training facilities were insufficient.
The consultant objected to the proposal because the costs were too high and the training facilities insufficient.


Parallel structure with paired conjunctions (either … or, not only … but also, both … and, whether … or, as … as):

Customers may either pick up the merchandise themselves, or the company will deliver it for a small fee. (The placement of either suggests that the customer has a choice, but then the sentence switches to a different subject, the company.)
Customers may either pick up the merchandise themselves or have it delivered for a small fee.

I or me, oh my!

My Cat, My Pie, and I

Just watch my¹ cat and me² when we debate
whose pie it is there on my plate.

I may believe it’s mine³. Alas,
she knows what’s mine is hers.

My husband stares at us, my cat and me⁴,
and wants me⁵ to resist her piteous plea.

Of course, it all depends on me⁶,
because it's I⁷ who should have sway.

But we, my cat and I⁸, know whom I will obey
and do agree that she is mightier than I⁹.

And I do know myself¹⁰ and know the rule:
It will be she who wins and I who is the fool.¹¹

But she and I¹², we shroud all this in secrecy,
a private matter - between just her and me¹³.

Nobody else but she and I¹⁴ will grasp
who ate the cream with quite some zest:

Not I but she¹⁵ – who won’t confess.
So, hush! It wasn’t I¹⁶ who told you this.




1) My is the possessive form of I when it is followed by a noun.
2) Me is the object form of I. Somebody (subject) shall watch my cat and me (object).
3) Mine is the possessive form of I when it is NOT followed by a noun.
4) The cat and I are the object at which the husband stares. Moreover, a preposition (at) always requires the object form me.
5) Between a verb (want) and an infinitive (to resist), the object form me is needed.
6) After a preposition (here on) follows the object form me .
7) After linking verbs (be, seem, appear, become), the subject form I is required. Linking verbs link the subject (here it) to its modifier (here I) that describes the subject.
8) "my cat and I" is an appositive phrase explaining the subject (we) and must therefore also be in subject form.
9) She is mightier than I am.
10) Myself is the reflexive form of I. A sentence like "I cut myself" means that the subject (I) is affected by its action (to cut). When "I cut the meat," the cutting does not affect myself.
11) Another example of the personal pronoun after a linking verb: Subject (it), linking verb (will be), modifiers (she who wins/I who is the fool).
12) Appositive phrase preceding the subject (we)
13) Object form after preposition (between)
14) "She and I" are the subjects who will grasp what's going on.
15) Not I ate the cream but she did.
16) Another example of the subject form after a linking verb