Cut It Out

10 Simple Steps for Tight Writing and Better Sentences

Laura Swart

• Publisher: Brush Education
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781550597615
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Writing & Presentation Skills

If your writing needs a pick-me-up, here's a triple espresso. You don't have to be a grammar whiz to improve your writing. This quick guide delivers maximum results with minimum pain.

If you're a student, Cut It Out will help you write better essays and earn higher grades. If you're a professional, Cut It Out will make you a stronger communicator in every facet of your written work.

Using uniquely Canadian vignettes, professional writing coach Laura Swart teaches you how to avoid the 10 most common writing errors, trim excess words from your sentences, and eliminate telltale signs of weak writing. Say goodbye to meandering prose, and say hello to powerful sentences and paragraphs.

Chapter 1

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Manitoba Resurrection

strings of little words

Rule #1

Try not to use too many strings of little words because they really do add a lot of unnecessary clutter to your sentences.

Have you ever met someone who rants on and on and on but never says anything? Imagine what it’s like to grade a paper that does the same thing. I can assure you, your professor would rather scrub toilets than read an essay that chatters like a magpie.

In rule #1, I used a strong word: clutter. But because it straggles behind a string of little words, it’s invisible.

Strings are inventories of abstraction: try not to use too many; they really do add a lot. None of these words stirs the senses—the reader can’t see them or hear them, so she must work harder to unpack the sentence.

To improve the sentence, I can say something like this: Strings of little words clutter your sentences. Now the two interesting words come into view: strings and clutter.

Why, you ask, is cutting out a few little words such a big deal? Think about it. If you cut two words from every sentence of a ten-page essay, you eliminate about 250 excesses—and make more room for the content-rich words and phrases that intoxicate your professors.

Sample Reading

There is a tiny little wood frog that lives deep in the woods of Manitoba. The truth is, this little frog doesn’t really have any special attributes that would attract us to it, except for one small thing. Each spring, unbelievably, it is said to be resurrected from the dead. In the winter, when the outside temperatures drop and fall to below freezing, it doesn’t choose to bury itself in the mud and it doesn’t settle beneath the ice on the bottom of a frozen lake. Instead of this, it pretty much freezes to death in a hole in the ground. The wood frog’s heartbeat and breathing slow down and after a period of time come to a stop. The water in its body very slowly crystallizes, and around 65 percent of it turns into ice. Its body temperature drops to a chilly −1 °C to −6 °C, and the frog becomes as hard and fragile as a piece of glass. Then, when the winter begins its long process of thawing out, the frog too begins to thaw—but it thaws from the inside out, not from the outside in, as a lot of people would expect.

My Corrections

Step 1

I first want to cut out the unnecessary words. Reread the first two sentences, and pay attention to the words in bold.

There is a tiny little wood frog that lives deep in the woods of Manitoba. The truth is, this little frog doesn’t really have any special attributes that would attract us to it, except for one small thing. Each spring, unbelievably, it is said to be resurrected from the dead.

I can improve these sentences by cutting the following words:

• tiny—means the same thing as little

• the truth is—redundant: the context indicates that I am relating facts, not fiction

• really—is this word really necessary?

• that would attract us to it—states the obvious; special attributes typically attract our attention

• unbelievably, it is said to be—dilutes the most important idea: resurrection from the dead

The sentences now read like this:

There is a little wood frog that lives deep in the woods of Manitoba. This frog doesn’t have any special attributes except for one small thing. Each spring, it is resurrected from the dead.

Before I move on, I want to ensure that the sentences are clear; sometimes when you cut out extra words, errors pop up out of nowhere. In the example above, I deleted the phrase that would attract us to it, but I forgot to insert a comma after special attributes.

This frog doesn’t have any special attributes, except for one small thing. Each spring, it is resurrected from the dead.

Step 2

Next, I’ll underline the content-rich words—those that convey meaning—to see if I’ve overlooked any unnecessary little words.

There is a little wood frog that lives deep in the woods of Manitoba. This frog doesn’t have any special attributes, except for one small thing. Each spring, it is resurrected from the dead.

If I juggle a few things around, I’ll have an impressive sentence:

Deep in the Manitoba wood lives the common wood frog—a mundane little frog, apart from a singular eccentricity: each spring, it is resurrected from the dead.

Notice that I cut out empty words like there, that, and this. I used the sensory words deep and dead to empower the beginning and end of the sentence, and I inserted a colon (:) to highlight the frog’s defining feature: its resurrection from the dead.

The original word count in step 1 is 50; the final word count is 27. The rewrite says the same thing more concisely—and, I think, more powerfully.

Step 3

Read the next few sentences of the paragraph.

In the winter, when the outside temperatures drop and fall to below freezing, it doesn’t choose to bury itself in the mud and it doesn’t sett...