How to Fix Wordy Writing

A writer and teacher shares a lesson for helping students understand the importance of clear, concise writing, and spotting needless words.

Of all the commandments contained in “The Elements of Style,” the ubiquitous writing guide by Cornell professor William Strunk Jr. and his former student, and author, E.B. White, Rule 17, “Omit needless words,” has proved to be the most pertinent in my writing classrooms.

When I was new to teaching writing to young adults and teenagers, I theorized that social media, texting and even our shortened attention spans meant that I should be ready for terse correspondences, malnourished prose and final assignments that just barely made the required word count.

I was way off.

Indeed, my experience teaching nonfiction writing to undergraduates and high school students has taught me that today’s nascent writers hand in assignments just as full of redundancies, unnecessary prepositions and fluff as those Cornell students presented to Strunk over a century ago.

In this lesson, students will learn the importance of concise, clear writing as well as techniques for spotting and omitting those pesky “needless” words.

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