The easiest way to lower the word count in your copy is to eliminate the words that aren’t doing any work. Non-working words are easy to spot but you actually have to look for them. Wait a minute, one just slipped in. See it back there? Hiding between ‘you’ and ‘have’? Yep, that’s it, ‘actually’ isn’t doing any work.
Words like actually, suddenly, basically and shortly rarely do any work. They simply don’t help you move your story forward. Oh, there’s another one. ‘Simply’.
Watch for those lazy verbs too. Was, are, have been- slackers all. Want to know something else? Lazy words breed more words. For example,
“How can you tell if your words are working or not”?
Or
“Do your words move the story”?
11 words in the first sentence, 6 in the second. Now we’re getting somewhere.
But what about the first sentence in this post? .
“The easiest way to lower the word count in your copy is to eliminate the words that aren’t doing any work”. 21 words
Not too bad, but how about,
“The easiest way to lower the word count in your copy is to eliminate non-working words”. 16 words.
Better, but still cluttered.
“Lower your word count by eliminating non-working words”. 8 words.
Even better, but I think I can make it shorter.
“Improve your copy. Eliminate unnecessary words”. 6 words
It’s difficult to remember to inspect your copy for non-working words. I forget frequently. But remembering will improve your writing.
GF 4.8
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Pingback on Feb 28th, 2007 at 11:46 am
[...] And yet none explicitly deal with the fundamental issue: too many damn words. [...]
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Pingback on Mar 21st, 2007 at 5:41 am
[...] Fewer words [...]
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Pingback on Mar 21st, 2007 at 10:07 am
[...] Freely makes some great points about eliminating word clutter in this post. Content may be king, but every word you put between your visitor and the finish line (a [...]
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February 28, 2007 at 9:36 am
Now this is the DG I remember :)
Great post.
February 28, 2007 at 9:33 pm
so is that plugin doing your reading level or doing it the old fashioned way? Interesting you went from a 12 to a 4, were we supposed to notice that, and draw any conclusions?
February 28, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Doing it the old fashioned way. Working on a plug-in. Draw no conclusions. Way too early for that. I’m also working on a Gunning-Fog algorithm that allows me to drop in literature to analyze. ; )
March 9, 2007 at 6:43 am
If I removed lazy words I would have hardly any content :P The challenge for me is this kind of editing can make writing robotic and less human?
March 13, 2007 at 3:28 pm
>>robotic and less human?
You can certainly over-edit and eliminate personality, but if you’re moving your message forward and the message is really yours I wouldn’t worry too much about removing your style. Style has a tendency to come out regardless of how many words are involved.
March 16, 2007 at 9:09 pm
I remember one award-winning writer’s 10 rules of writing. It’s a straightforward guide to effective writing.
March 17, 2007 at 1:38 am
Thanks for the link Jonathan. 10 rules and no nonsense.
March 20, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Strunk & White would be proud.
July 12, 2007 at 1:53 pm
It took me a while to find it again, but the Word Statistics Plugin at http://flagrantdisregard.com/wordstats/ is incredible for real-time analysis on readability using the Flesch-Kincaid method and the Gunning-Fog method. So, you can use these numbers to signal you on when you should re-write your copy!
July 13, 2007 at 9:54 am
Thanks for that link, that little app is pretty impressive.