Subtract Don’t Add: A Simple Tip for Improving The Elegance of Your Writing
A lesson I have learnt twice…
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A few days ago, I was reviewing a blog article with one of my clients.
As we read through her piece together, we got to a problematic paragraph.
We kept reading through the sentences in that paragraph thinking “Something just doesn’t feel right about how the sentences in this paragraph are structured.”
But we couldn’t place our hands on what it was. I read the sentences over and over again, slowly each time, but it still eluded me.
Then I decided to strip that paragraph down. I read through each sentence in the paragraph with one question in mind: Is this sentence absolutely necessary?
Question: Is this sentence absolutely necessary?
A moment later, I took out the first sentence that I felt didn’t meet my criteria — it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
Immediately I took out that sentence, the entire paragraph glistened with so much elegance and clarity.
We read through the paragraph again and my client, Sabrina (not her real name), exclaimed in surprise.
She couldn’t believe that taking out a sentence could have such a dramatic effect on the elegance of her piece.
It wasn’t a new experience for me though. I’ve known it ever since I read the book, Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White.
But it was a wonderful reminder for me that as writers, sometimes what we need to make our writing glow is subtraction, not addition.
Sometimes what we need to make our writing glow is subtraction, not addition.
To your eternal greatness!
