When is less more and when is more less?

[Miss Mae]

When is less more and when is more less in constructing sentences in English? When could writers just hope that their readers understand?

[Joe Carillo]

Sentences are just a tool of language; they need only as many words as needed to clearly and succinctly communicate an idea. Less than that is lacking, and more is superfluous; only when there’s prior and complete understanding between writer and reader can it be otherwise. At its core, writing is simply a sharing of mutually understood visual codes.

No, writers should never just hope that their readers will understand. They should always make an effort to be understood in as few words as possible. Using more words than needed often just engenders befuddlement rather than understanding.

[Miss Mae]

But when the subjects involved already knew what both of them are talking about, would it be okay to omit some words or phrases for brevity?

[Joe Carillo]

It would be okay to omit some words or phrases for brevity, of course, but only when you are writing to an exclusive, one-on-one private audience--like your lover, sorority sister, or gang mate. In such situations, you can mutually develop and share codes as intimate, cryptic, or secretive as you want them to be. This will allow you to lop off entire phrases or clauses from your messages and still get yourself understood. But when writing for mass audiences like newspaper and magazine readers, you obviously can't do that. You need to write full-bodied, grammatically and semantically correct sentences that can convey not only the basic information you want to share but also its various nuances. It will be dangerous to unilaterally drop words and phrases from your sentences on the assumption that your readers already know them beforehand. You will not only fail to commmunicate but also be perceived as a scatterbrain when you do that.

[Miss Mae]

Thank you for sharing your views, Sir.

[Miss Mae]

How should it go when omitting words in a paragraph?

Will it be alright if I just write Even doctors cannot say when exactly their patients would encounter a problem or two. That’s why they themselves advise their patients to see them again—on the dot with their appointments or not—whenever the latter do?

Or will it help if I become more specific? (such as adding experience problems at the tailend of the paragraph above.)

[Joe Carillo]

You’ve done precisely the right thing in your construction of these two adjoining sentences:

“Even doctors cannot say when exactly their patients would encounter a problem or two. That’s why they themselves advise their patients to see them again—on the dot with their appointments or not—whenever the latter do?”

You used the verb “do” in the second sentence as a substitute verb to avoid repeating the verb phrase "would encounter a problem or two” in the first sentence. Unless such use of “do” as a substitute will result in ambiguity or lack of clarity, use this grammatical device routinely in your compositions. English-savvy readers are averse to needless repetition, so you do them a big favor by resisting the temptation to unduly repeat the same words or phrases in adjoining sentences.

[Miss Mae]

But you said in your previous reply that 'it would be okay to omit some words or phrases for brevity, of course, but only when you are writing to an exclusive, one-on-one private audience--like your lover, sorority sister, or gang mate'. While I have no idea how many exactly will consider reading that paragraph, I'm quite sure that many will do since it is a part of a contest entry. Does your grammar prescription still holds true?

[Joe Carillo]

Using the verb “do” as a substitute verb to avoid repeating a verb phrase isn't the same as elliptical sentence construction. Ellipsis is not substitution for brevity's sake but the dropping of words or phrases in a sentence that the writer thinks would be obvious to the reader. And what we talked about in an earlier posting is not ellipsis per se but coded language, in which people use a secret language consisting of letters, words, numbers, or symbols to represent shared private or intimate information or sentiments. This is a different ballgame altogether from ellipsis and from using the verb "do" as a substitute for a long verb phrase.

[Miss Mae]

Seemed I was just confused. Thank you, Sir!

[Miss Mae]

Should I have written the preposition for between the words 'thing' and 'sure'?

There’s only one thing sure about Russia.

[Miss Mae]

Should writers still specify what is obvious?

For those who were 18 at the time the accident happened, the three years does not start until they turn 18.

[Joe Carillo]

The sentence you presented doesn't make sense to me. Nothing in it appears to be obvious.

[Miss Mae]

I'm sorry.

But should there be the words "years old" after the specified age in the sentence so that it would be clear that it is talking about a period?

For those who were 18 at the time the accident happened, the three years does not start until they turn 18.

[Joe Carillo]

That sentence you presented still won’t make sense even if the words “years old” are added to it, as follows:

“For those who were 18 at the time the accident happened, the three years does not start until they turn 18 years old.”

The above sentence is illogical. If those referred to were already 18 years old when the accident happened, all of them had already turned 18. The main clause, “the three years does not start until they turn 18 years old,” is therefore grammatically and semantically faulty. The verbs “does not start” and “turn” are in the wrong tense, making the timeline for the whole sentence wrong.

That sentence would make sense if the tense for that main clause is changed as follows:

“For those who were already 18 at the time the accident happened, the three years would start from the day they turned 18.”

“Would start” is, of course, in the past conditional, and “turned” is in the past tense. In this sentence construction, the sense is clear even if the phrase “years old” isn’t added.

When making statements of the kind you presented, it’s important to keep in mind that in reckoning with the age of a living person, that age remains the same for a whole year until that person’s next birth day. For instance, the age of someone born on March 6, 1995 will remain 18 from March 6, 2013 until March 5, 2014. The day after, March 6, 2014, that person will turn 19. In short, a living person’s age stays the same for one whole year.