One of the joys of reading good writing is being led effortlessly by the smooth flow of prose from one sentence to the next. No clutter impedes the reader’s understanding of the writer’s ideas, no strange word or turn of phrase disrupts the unraveling of thought, no doubtful or false claim is made to ruin the writer’s credibility. The composition plays with not a single false note and builds up to a delicious, satisfying finish.
If all English prose were like that, what a beautiful thing every printed page would be! But rarely does prose come uncluttered at the time of delivery. It comes swathed with the messy detritus of birth—tautologies or needless repetition, illogical constructions, jargon, clichés, lumpy words and phrases, and other forms of verbal hemorrhage. All self-respecting writers should thus be their own midwives, cleaning up and buffing the infant before it is displayed for the whole world to see. When they get too lazy or too hurried to do this, what results is ungainly, unsightly, and sometimes utterly embarrassing prose.
Take this curious advertising claim by a wristwatch brand:
“A commitment made on your wedding day is forever. It is a lifetime bind that is meant to last. Nothing can express this commitment better than a [the brand].” The second sentence, which restates the first without giving any new information or flavor, is so clumsy a tautology that it should have been eliminated outright. Even worse, it misuses the word “bind,” giving it the negative sense of “nuisance” and “restriction,” instead of a “bond” in the sense of “union.” “Tie” would have been truer to its tone and intent. (“The ties that bind” is a much better idiom than “the bind that ties,” right?) As to the third sentence, “Nothing can express this commitment better than a [the brand],” we have here an incredibly tall claim that simply couldn’t be true, even allowing for creative license. “Few things can express this commitment better than a [the brand]” perhaps?
Faulty logic and misleading statements likewise bubble up from prose that hasn’t undergone proper midwifery. Take this news story sometime ago in a leading newspaper, headlined “Half of Pinoys poor but upbeat on 2003”:
“Almost all Filipinos feel upbeat about this year, in spite of the fact that more than half considered themselves poor in 2002. This was one of the several bright conclusions drawn from the Social Weather Stations’ review of its 2002 surveys... In SWS’nationwide survey on self-rated poverty last November, 61 percent of the respondents said they considered themselves poor...Overall, 95 percent of the respondents said they faced 2003 ‘with hope.’” You can see that this story and its mathematics are patently false and misleading. The headline itself is wrong on both counts: “61 percent” of Pinoys considering themselves poor is certainly not “half of Pinoys,” but close to 2/3 or 66 percent of Pinoys. And because the story itself says that “95 percent” of Pinoys faced 2003 “with hope,” that the part of the headline that says “half of Pinoys...(are) upbeat on 2003” is also outrageously false—a full 45 percentage points away from the correct figure of 95 percent!
And here’s another outrage: the story’s lead sentence itself misrepresents this finding by saying that “almost all Filipinos feel upbeat about this year...” In statistics, 5 percent is definitely not “almost nothing,” particularly if applied to 78,000,000 Pinoys. That’s 4,000,000 downbeat Filipinos, or about half the Greater Manila population! (It’s also funny how the writer described the findings as “one of the several bright conclusions” of the SWS survey. Were some of the conclusions “dumb”?)
Corporate or professional jargon is another hotbed of self-important, overinflated, and confusing prose clutter. Look at this position description in a recent newspaper want ad for a “Product Manager for Corporate Business”:
“The successful candidate will be tasked to formulate strategies for the [company]’s corporate business in the attainment of revenue and subscriber targets. He/she shall evaluate the market scenario and its impact on the business to aid in his/her development and implementation of plans and projects based on identified positioning and issues of the brand.” This writing overkill makes one suspect that it’s trying to make the job much more important than it really is, and that it expects the reader or prospective applicant to be suitably awed by it. Note the flatulent phrases “successful candidate,” “tasked to formulate strategies,” “in the attainment of,” “evaluate the market scenario,” “to aid in his/her development,” and “identified positioning and issues of the brand.” When the hot air is let out from the inflated prose, it becomes more pleasant and convincing:
“This position is responsible for developing strategies to achieve the revenue and subscriber targets of our corporate business. The job will involve market evaluation, brand positioning, and developing and implementing marketing plans and projects.” Self-midwifery through ruthless self-editing and rewriting—there really is no substitute for it in making our prose truer to our vision and more acceptable and appealing to the readers.
This essay first appeared in my “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times and subsequently became Chapter 139 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge
, ©2009 and published by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times
:More ways to get rid of clutter*Click this link now to read Karen Hertzberg's detailed and very instructive "30 Writing Tips to Make Writing Easier" in Grammarly.com now!Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.Next week:
Do kingfishers eat butter? (June 20, 2024)