Omit Needless Words

I sometimes wish that I could play a musical instrument. I imagine it must be enjoyable to pick up a guitar, or sit down at a piano, and make music. Alas, I have never learned to play anything. The recorder that I supposedly learned to play at school does not count.

My recorder and I made one appearance in a concert at school which was marked by my gazing without comprehension at the sheet music before me, covering holes on my recorder and blowing into its mouthpiece mostly at random; the law of averages suggests that at some point I played the right note, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

There are people who can play music by ear (not being able to read music has not inhibited illustrious performers such as Elvis Presley, Slash, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix), however, knowledge of musical theory is probably advantageous if one has ambitions to compose, and acquiring that knowledge requires formal learning.

Jimi Hendrix

As I lack that sort of knowledge, I could no more sit down and write music than I could fly to the moon. On the other hand, I know as much as I need to about writing prose – or so I thought.

Some doubt crept in when I read Stephen King’s entertaining and informative book, On Writing. I’ve not read much of King’s fiction, just his alternative history novel, 11.22.63, about a time traveller who attempts to prevent the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, and The Outsider, which starts out as a straightforward crime fiction story, but ends in horror/supernatural territory. I appreciated the subject matter of 11.22.63 more than The Outsider, but enjoyed King’s writing style in both.

Stephen King

On Writing is part autobiography, part writing manual. The chapter in which he describes being hit by the ice cream truck that almost claimed his life is thoroughly engrossing. The chapters that comprise instruction on how to write are interesting, but apart from guidance on editing, and the very valid advice to limit the use of adverbs - especially when writing dialogue - King’s most useful suggestion is to read The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and E B White.

The Elements of Style is brief, just ninety-six pages, and barely a word is wasted. Strunk practices what he preaches; “omit needless words” he urges us in Rule 17. Reading this book made me realise that in the English I was taught at school, grammar and the theory of writing played very little part.

Worth reading, even if all you write are work emails.

I have vague memories of being taught some formal grammar at junior school, but from the age of eleven onwards, nothing. What I understand about grammar is probably similar to the musician who cannot read music; I know what sounds right and what sounds wrong but I would struggle to explain it. Yes, I do know what an article is, and a noun, and a verb, so I suppose that means I could parse a simple sentence, although I struggle to see why I would want to.

You will have noticed that the last sentence ended with a preposition (I know what one of those is, largely due to the fact that ending a sentence with a preposition has long been regarded as an almost mortal sin in written English). One might imagine that Strunk would frown on such a practice, but he does not, since slavishly avoiding ending sentences with prepositions may lead to tortuous construction, up with which he would not put.

Sadly, while Strunk would not have been concerned with my ending that sentence with “to,” he would have been less impressed by my following it up with one that contains “due to the fact that,” which he says should be revised out of every sentence in which it appears.

That is not the only expression of which Strunk disapproves that I am guilty of using, overusing, perhaps. “As to whether” is another, as is “in terms of.” These, and others, are hangovers from my working days, when I wrote a lot of technical documents, such as user specifications and user manuals, documents that require a certain style, or at least lend themselves to a certain style. That style is rather formal, hackneyed, repetitive, and trite because that is the norm. One could not write a user manual in the style of Raymond Chandler or Damon Runyan, although it might be fun to try!

Strunk rightly decries the use of certain words that add nothing to a sentence. For instance, certainly is a word that pops up frequently in my writing, and so is feature, as in “a feature of.” Strunk disapproves of both, and frankly, it is hard to disagree: he would probably not approve of frankly, either.

Strunk says that qualifiers, such as quite, very, rather, little, and pretty should be avoided, and I agree, but they insinuate themselves in my writing without my being aware of it. Likewise, adverbs. Blogs don’t have much, if any, dialogue, which is fortunate, because if I wrote dialogue, I suspect it would be peppered with them. Dialogue doesn’t always need “he said,” “she said,” if the identity of the speaker is clear; when it isn’t, a constant stream of them can be wearisome, but not as bad as people speaking “consolingly,” or “tiredly.”

It is quite galling to read a book on how to write and find that one’s own style features heavily as what not to do (I am conscious of the fact that this sentence did not require the word quite; it was either galling or it wasn’t, there really is no need to qualify the degree to which it was galling). A voice is screaming “omit needless words!” at me, but it is not easy.

I know I overwrite without Strunk having to point it out, and according to his usage of the word, I flagrantly misuse ‘hopefully,’ although so does virtually everyone else.

Strunk’s book, and other sources, have shown me that what I know about grammar is instinctive rather than learned. I know that I use the pluperfect tense, but would struggle to define it. The same goes for the fronted adverbial (not something Strunk addresses), a term I recently encountered for the first time on Twitter. Immediately, I Googled it, so now I know what a fronted adverbial is, although I do not think that I am any the better off for it.

Reading Stephen King and William Strunk’s books has taught me valuable lessons. Firstly, I realise that I know very little of the theory of writing, especially grammar, and secondly that my writing is peppered with stock phrases that it would be better off without.

The most valuable lesson I have learned, however, is “omit needless words.” I will try to do so in future.