Clutter
I enjoyed how Zinsser advises to “look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly” (p. 16) because there have been many times lately when I find myself frustrated because of an author’s choice of wordy language. Even in college textbooks, authors use complicated vocabulary and complex phrases to sound “educated and formal” when in reality, it only results in confused readers. When I read this part of Zinsser’s book, I was reminded of Albert Einstein when he said “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. All of writing has a purpose, so maintaining clarity helps writers to better assert their purpose. I hope that I can try and follow Zinsser’s advice and I found that his trick of “[putting] brackets around every component in a piece of writing that wasn’t doing useful work” (p. 15) really helps because it allows for a more gentle editing approach. Usually, I write very few drafts so I hope that I can begin to edit and “prune” my work much more now.
4 responses so far
I so agree that complicated words and sentence structure dont make writing impressive, they make it hard to read. And its interesting because when i write, my first instinct is always to put in high vocabulary words and twisty sentences that end before they start. And then when i start proofreading, im like, wait- what the heck does that even mean?!
So pruning your writing is really important. But its also important to know when to stop and just let it be. If you overprune, your essay can start to look naked and cold. Lots of times, letting your writing sit for a bit before you start hacking away helps.
This is one of those things that’s much easier said than done, especially when writing a formal essay. It’s common to think that the teacher wants you to sound “academic” but you often end up sounding like you’re unsure of what you’re saying instead. When students are given length requirements, though, and truly have nothing more to say on the subject, what else is there for them to do?
I really like the quote from Albert Einstein. Simplicity is so important in good writing. Often, I’m reading a book or an article and I just can’t understand what the writer is trying to say. I used to blame it on myself- that I am not intelligent enough to understand this writer’s lofty words. Now, Zinsser helped me realize that if I, as a reader, don’t understand what the author is trying to say, it is probably the author’s fault.
Kunal, I loved this part! It made me aware of my own verbosity and I’ve started to condense my writing so that it is more “loaded.”
Pessia and Nomi, the point you each brought up about sounding academic has been playing on my mind for a very long time. It’s hard to strike a balance between concision and oversimplification, especially in speech writing– a vital balance to keep for debate. I was captain of my high school’s debate team, and I would have to speak about this constantly; my team members often forgot that the judges for our debates were ordinary people, not specialists in the fields discussed.