WriteWay

THE WRITE WAY

“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
~ William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you're inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will
delete it, and the writing will be just as it should be.”
~ Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

In exasperation, President Franklin Roosevelt threw out the following 1942 blackout order: “Such preparations shall be made as will completely obscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildings occupied by the Federal government during an air raid for any period of time from visibility by reason of internal or external illumination.” In protest to the order’s wordiness and vagueness, the president ordered its immediate replacement, to wit: “In buildings where they have to keep the work going, put something across the windows."

Because achieving clarity is the primary aim of college writing, the promise of upcoming writing assignments brings these writers’ sage advice to this column. The prevalence of long-winded, meaningless, pretentious clutter in reports and essays (the ‘deadwood” of writing) suggests that many new (and returning) students have not given much thought to the importance of clear writing, thinking as they are wont to do that writing a first draft along with a click of the grammar and spell check tab completes the writing assignment. Experience informs us otherwise, however. Carelessness, laziness, minimum word requirements, attempts to mask weak knowledge, and attempts to “sound” more sophisticated are among the primary causes leading to the non-substantial writing style that Strunk, Twain, and Roosevelt railed against.

What can you as a new or returning college writer look for as you write and revise your work? Well, for one thing, eliminate all words that serve no function. You see, conciseness beats wordiness without taking anything substantive from the discussion. To address Twain’s abhorrence of the word “very,” a weak intensifier, we can substitute “the character was very tired and fell asleep” with this: “Exhausted, the character fell into a deep sleep.” To use another example, just how do we measure the difference of being “very rich” with being “rich”? Mature language skills do not depend on weak intensifiers.

Moreover, straightforward language is NOT simplistic language. Why fill your pages with meaningless words when only precise, concise diction can convey the complexities of your thinking, experiences, discoveries, and uniqueness? Educated audiences recognize and appreciate honest and precise language. The simplest, most direct way of saying something, in other words, is always the best way. At college level in particular, you should eliminate the following examples of clutter to gain an immediate and powerful effect in writing. You’ll gain better vocabulary, too, as a result of eliminating wordiness and vagueness.

For enhanced readability, the following list of expressions omits italics. How can you improve the list (even if it means eliminating some expressions altogether)?

a lot, lots (and never alot)	in the nature of
a must	in today's modern world
as previously stated in the introduction	in today's society (or world)
as you can see from the above	in view of the foregoing
be there	it is certain that
by means of	it is obvious that
by virtue of the fact that	it is often the case that
came to the realization that	it seems like
concerning the matter of	make a determination (or recommendation) as to
due to the fact that	needless to say
during the course of	point in fact
for the purpose of	point in time
for the reason that	rarely ever
for the simple reason that	regardless of the fact that
he is of the opinion that	relating to the subject
hopefully	the reason being is because
in my opinion	until such time as
in our society (or world) today	well aware
in the event that	whole new
in the final analysis	with regards to this matter

In addition, you should eliminate all expressions including expletives (“it is obvious,” “there are differences”), especially those passive expletives announcing your intentions (“It should be observed,” “It should be noted,” “It should be pointed out”). The same goes for expressions describing your thoughts and opinions. Your drawing attention to yourself unnecessarily detracts from the written work.

You can find a list of other common expletives in your English handbook. Using them in everyday speech is one thing, to spread them throughout your writing another. Because they are tedious expressions leading to dull writing, taking the time to replace them with genuine subjects and active verbs will offer immediate benefits and improved grades.

Revision, then, is clearly an extensive undertaking in your writing, and writing is hard work even for the most skilled among us. Few sentences come out perfectly the first time we write them. Still, with time, practice, and will, each one of us can identify our writing weaknesses and learn to correct them.

The next column will continue the discussion of achieving clarity and maturity in your writing through the elimination of euphemisms, redundancies, clichés, passive voice, and jargon. Eventually, the column will cover grammatical problems such as sentence structure and agreement that also lead to unclear messages.

As always, I welcome suggestions from students, staff, and faculty for these monthly columns and shall try to use their contributions in future columns. Should other readers have a topic for future columns, please write me at jmiller@ccccd.edu or telephone me at 972.881.5981. Students wishing improved writing skills will find useful links to a dozen or so English grammar sites at http://iws.ccccd.edu/jmiller/Home_Page_Instructional_Menu_Joyce_Marie_Miller.htm .

Pr ofessor Joyce M. Mille r Return to Home Page Return to Instructional Menu

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THE WRITE WAY

As a change of pace from featuring word usage and general writing hints, this month’s column focuses instead on correct pronunciation. In fact, because the list of words we mispronounce is such an extensive one, a future column may again feature additional commonly mispronounced words. For ease of reading, the following list is arranged alphabetically.

Athlete: Before adding an extra sound that causes us to mispronounce this word, we need to note that the word only has two syllables, namely: ath-lete, not ath-A-lete.

Diptheria: We mistakenly apply a “ph” sound instead of a pure “f” sound to this word. Instead, pronounce it DIF-theria.

Disastrous: This word has three syllables, not four. Pronounce it as di-ZAS’-trus, not as di-zas-ter-us.

Electoral: Many of us are accustomed to accenting the third syllable when we should instead accent the SECOND one and pronounce it this way: e-LEC’ toral. (Moreover, the word’s ending does not have an “i” sound.)

Et cetera: That we usually abbreviate this Latin word pair (etc.) probably gives rise in an uncharacteristic way to our mispronouncing et cetera with an “x” sound instead of a “t” sound. Pronounce and use it in your academic writing as two words (et means “and”; cetera means “the rest”).

Err: This word should rhyme with “fur,” not with “air” or “error.” Nothing gets more perplexed faces in my classroom than does the adage “To err is human, to forgive divine” correctly pronounced with the “fur” sound. In fact, some students ask me, “Don’t you mean “To air is human?”

Especially: Like the “x” sound we occasionally hear in et cetera, we sometimes hear an “x” sound in this word. We need to keep the pure “s” sound following the first letter “e.”

Forte: Although this word is spelled "forte,” unless we are speaking of music, we must pronounce it as fort without an “a” sound ending. (This is another one of those words many of us likely inherited from parents mistakenly believing the word needed a saucy foreign flavor.)

Heinous: Even well-known news anchors mispronounce this word with three syllables and a “he” sound instead of a “hay” sound (he-in-nus instead of HAY-NUS). Expectations of proper pronunciation notwithstanding, we should not follow their errant mispronunciation.

Height: Unlike the word width, this word does not have a “th” ending.

Hierarchy: Up we go, higher and higher! This is, in fact, how we may wish to remember that the word is not pronounced HIGH-arky but rather is pronounced HIGHER-arky.

Lambaste: Again, this is a word radio and television commentators frequently mispronounce. The ending uses the long “a” (baste) as in a recipe’s direction to baste the turkey.

Miniature: We must not forget to pronounce the “a” in the third syllable so that the word sounds like mini-A-ture, not mini-ture.

Mischievous: Unlike the word above, the fault lies in adding a sound not included in the word. If we think of the word mischief and pronounce it that way, we won’t add an “i” sound after the letter “v.”

Nuclear: A certain president mispronounces this word as nu-clu-ear, not nu-clear, and sets himself up for public ridicule. Thinking of “new” and “clear” when you see this word avoids his error.

Often: This word never requires the sound of the “t.”

Prerogative: Why we often replace the prefix “pre” in prerogative with “per” is perplexing; avoid “per-rog-ative.”

Percolate: We need not add a “u” sound in place of the “o” sound in this word, yet we often do just that. (To compound the word’s frequent mispronunciation, we even misuse the word to mean an upward, not downward, direction.)

Prostate: Omit the “r” in the ending to avoid the common mispronunciation of this word. (We probably have in mind the word prostrate, a word that can mean flat or exhausted, when we misspell or mispronounce this word.)

Supposedly: Perhaps it’s a matter or carelessness instead of a lack of knowledge that leads some to add letters and a “b” ending to this word, but, regardless of the reason, we must pronounce it with a distinct “d” ending.

Zoology: We probably think of a zoo because of the spelling of this discipline and thus mispronounce zoology with a “zoo” instead of a correct “zo” (rhyming with “so”) sound.

As always, I welcome suggestions from students, staff, and faculty for these monthly columns and shall try to use their contributions in future columns. Should other readers have a topic for future columns, please write me at jmiller@ccccd.edu or telephone me at 972.881.5981. Students wishing improved writing skills will find useful links to a dozen or so English grammar sites at http://iws.ccccd.edu/jmiller/Home_Page_Instructional_Menu_Joyce_Marie_Miller.htm .

Pr ofessor Joyce M. Miller Return to Home Page Return to Instructional Menu