Removing needless words

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Yesterday I was skimming randomly-selected sentences from a collection of English-language novels, and happened on this one from George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words." This brought to mind two things I had never put together before, Orwell on Newspeak and Strunk on style.

Here's Orwell:

'How is the Dictionary getting on?' said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

'Slowly,' said Syme. 'I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating.'

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

'The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,' he said. 'We're getting the language into its final shape–the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words–scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.'

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well."

And here's Strunk, as described by E.B. White ("Letter from the East", The New Yorker, 7/27/1957):

Every so often I make an attempt to simplify my life, burning my books behind me, selling the occasional chair, discarding the accumulated miscellany. […]

A book I have decided not to burn is a small one that arrived in the mail not long ago, a gift from a friend in Ithaca. It is "The Elements of Style," by the late William Strunk, Jr., and it was known in the Cornell campus in my day as "the little book," with the stress on the word "little." I must have once owned a copy, for I took English 8 under Professor Strunk in 1919 and the book was required reading, but my copy presumably failed to survive an early purge. I'd not had eyes on it in thirty-eight years. Am now delighted to study it again and rediscover its rich deposits of gold. […]

From every line there peers out at me the puckish face of my professor, his short hair parted neatly in the middle and combed down over his forehead, his eyes blinking incessantly behind steel-rimmed spectacles as though he had just emerged into strong light, his lips nibbling each other like nervous horses, his smile shuttling to and fro in a carefully edged mustache.

"Omit needless words!" cries the author on page 21, and into that imperative Will Strunk really put his heart and soul. In the day when I was sitting in his class, he omitted so many nedless words, and omitted them so forcibly and with such eagerness and obvious relish, that he often seemed in the position of having short-changed himself, a man left with nothing more to say yet with time to fill, a radio prophet who had outdistanced the clock. Will Struck got out of this predicament by a simple trick: he uttered every sentence three times. When he delivered his oration on brevity to the class, he leaned forward over his desk, grasped his coat lapels in his hands, and in a husky, conspiratorial voice said "Rule Thirteen. Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!"

Book burning, mid-century horror-movie vibe, removal of undesirable words, ruling-class ideas of appropriate language, …

For added irony, this was the advertisement on the magazine page facing the passage just quoted:

See also "Modification as social anxiety", 5/16/20014.



29 Comments

  1. Bill Taylor said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 8:47 am

    I'd never noticed before – that last paragraph quoted from E. B. White, taken out of context, sounds like a somewhat snide put-down of a pretty incompetent professor: he comes to class unprepared (his lecture isn't substantial enough to fill the allotted time) and he repeats himself – when exhorting the students to avoid redundancy, no less! Looking at the whole essay, White clearly feels affection and respect for Strunk, but maybe tinged with a certain genial condescension? It makes me wonder how much of "The Elements of Style" actually originated with Strunk. I imagine someone has done a comparison of the original text with White's version – maybe even right here on Language Log.

    [Bill: The short answer is that Strunk wrote chapters 1-4, which are all about grammar and punctuation rather than style (Strunk's book was mistitled), and White added chapter 5, "An Approach to Style". But White also added bits in chapter 4 (new peeves in the chapter on commonly misused expressions, and a few other additions), and censored some things about Strunk's text (as Jan Freeman discovered, he added the rule that which must never introduce a restrictive relative clause, but then erased all the instances where Strunk had not followed this rule by changing Strunkian which to that!). That was all done for the first edition of the Strunk & White version in 1959; but White then produced further editions in 1972, 1979, and 2000, each time adding peeves or fiddling with wording a bit. For example, in 1972 he added a paragraph of rant about "hopefully". My essay "The land of the free and The Elements of Style" covers a lot of this, and tries to give details of which edition had what. As David Russinoff points out below, he wrote an analysis of White's revisions of Strunk (http://www.russinoff.com/david/usage/strunk.html), largely disapproves of White. I agree with much of Russinoff says about White, but differ from him in having a much lower opinion of Strunk. It should not be forgotten that the majority of that awful little book is now almost a full century old, and in addition to be wrong about what was grammatical in 1918, it is now absurdly old-fashioned as well. The fact that it is still being pressed on college students appalls me.—Geoff Pullum]

  2. David L said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 9:29 am

    This post put me in mind of Basic English, and going to the Wikipedia page about it I found this remark from its creator, C.K. Ogden:

    "What the World needs most is about 1,000 more dead languages—and one more alive."

    And didn't G.B. Shaw come up with a reduced English along with 'rational' spelling?

    Well, the past is a foreign country, as the saying goes…

  3. Haamu said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 9:36 am

    "Will Struck" — was his middle initial "B."?

  4. Haamu said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 9:48 am

    "Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!"

    So, is this pure doublethink ("the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them"), or is he purposefully saying that repetition is not needless — i.e., that words are sometimes needed not to express thought, but to eclipse it?

    Either way, it's easy to picture the lecture delivered via telescreen.

  5. Morten Jonsson said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 10:18 am

    I'm sorry if this is too obvious to be worth mentioning, but there's all the difference in the world between literally removing words from the language and restricting yourself to the ones necessary for your particular purpose. The one is a totalitarian dream, the most direct means of thought control. The other is a rhetorical preference, coming from an aesthetic of Yankee plainness. Yes, it's a very narrow aesthetic, expressed rather too dogmatically, and trying to follow it too closely has led to a lot of confusion and absurdity over the years. But it's not totalitarian; it's about guiding choices, not eliminating them.

    [(myl) You're certainly right that there's an important difference in motivation. But Strunk fans have often made explicit neo-Whorfian arguments, to the effect that his rules are justified because they lead to clear thought as well as clear language — and for them, it's clear, unclarity is the ultimate thoughtcrime. And the strictures about avoiding modifiers are often phrased in a pretty totalitarian way, even if modifiers are simultaneously involved.]

  6. Terry Hunt said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 10:27 am

    What a pity that Strunk carelessly called his "little book" The Elements of Style. This misleading title almost suggests a mere set of suggestions to help improve the clarity and coherence of inept writers, rather than the ironclad set of grammatical rules that all must follow, which everyone now agrees was what he (abetted by White) really intended.

  7. J.W. Brewer said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 10:33 am

    The totalitarian impulse comes in when some power (whether governmental, professorial, or editorial) seeks to arrogate to itself the authority to decide for other writers and speakers which words are "needless." It is excellent advice to use as many words as are needed to serve your particular purposes in the particular discourse, no more but no less,and to encourage both writers and speakers to have some degree of self-awareness in that regard. But how many words are needed in any given context often depends on your purpose or purposes, which may be varied and may also be different than the purposes the relevant authority figure might think he would have if he were doing the writing or talking. An aesthetic preference for a more baroque or ornamented style is itself an authorial purpose, and more and/or different words may be needful to implementing that purpose than would be needful for implementing some sort of dreary bauhaus/brutalist aesthetic.

  8. GretchenJoanna said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 11:40 am

    I have spent many hours helping my students to comb through their pages examining every sentence for "needless" words. I continue to do that in my own writing. It seems to me that the judgments an experienced writer makes about which words are superfluous reflect and create that writer's style. Active verbs are rarely in excess.

  9. Cervantes said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 12:07 pm

    Why "It's a beautiful thing . . . "? Why not, "It's beautiful, destroying words," or better yet, "Destroying words is beautiful."

  10. cM said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 1:40 pm

    What a beautiful denouncement of the concept of newspeak, by way of a wonderfully (un)subtle "show, don't tell":
    He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

    I have to reread 1984! – It's been over two decades, and I'm not even sure if I've ever read it in English.

  11. David Scott Marley said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 2:32 pm

    I love the smell of White-Out in the morning.

  12. Russinoff said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 3:31 pm

    Bill Taylor, for an analysis of the authorship of Strunk and White, see http://www.russinoff.com/david/usage/strunk.html.

  13. chris said,

    April 26, 2017 @ 9:55 pm

    "Omit needless words" is good for at least one thing: demonstrating the crucial importance of adjectives. Without the adjective "needless", you would be left with "Omit words", which I doubt anyone would promote as useful advice.

  14. ajay said,

    April 27, 2017 @ 6:10 am

    The totalitarian impulse comes in when some power (whether governmental, professorial, or editorial) seeks to arrogate to itself the authority to decide for other writers and speakers which words are "needless".

    This is (presumably unintentionally) hilarious. The totalitarian impulse!

  15. ajay said,

    April 27, 2017 @ 6:14 am

    It's really crying out for a Downfall video entitled "The Fuhrer Learns That General Steiner's Latest Op-Ed Article Is 200 Words Too Long".

  16. Adrian said,

    April 27, 2017 @ 11:48 am

    "I have spent many hours helping my students to comb through their pages examining every sentence for "needless" words." Wow! I'm happy to declare that I've spent no hours doing this.

  17. Christopher Henrich said,

    April 27, 2017 @ 1:51 pm

    @Terry Hunt: "a mere set of suggestions to help improve the clarity and coherence of inept writers" – I think this is what Strunk (and maybe White)intended. "Omit needless words" has been decried as being vague. But, for inexpert writers, its vagueness may be helpful. It forces them to think for themselves about what they have written.
    Style is not grammar. Grammar rules are relatively hard-edged; for instance, "big black horse" is correct English and "black big horse" just isn't. Style is a tissue of "soft rules." You split that infinitive, or not, depending on what sounds or feels right to you.

  18. BZ said,

    April 27, 2017 @ 2:57 pm

    But "omit needless words" is not the same as "don't repeat yourself". In fact, the fewer words you use, the more you repeat the ones you do.

  19. Terry Hunt said,

    April 27, 2017 @ 3:03 pm

    @ Christopher Henrich
    Yes, I agree with all you say: my previous comment was intended to be read ironically. Note however that Prof. Pullum's reply (added, I think, after my own comment) within Bill Taylor's initial comment throw's further light on the intentions of both Strunk and White which somewhat contradicts this view.

  20. Terry Hunt said,

    April 27, 2017 @ 3:06 pm

    Note that the feral apostrophe which has infiltrated "throw's" [sic] in my post above needs to be hunted down and shot.

  21. Andrew (not the same one) said,

    April 27, 2017 @ 5:06 pm

    Note however that Prof. Pullum's reply (added, I think, after my own comment) within Bill Taylor's initial comment throw's further light on the intentions of both Strunk and White which somewhat contradicts this view.

    I don't think Prof. Pullum's account is accurate. Certainly Strunk's work is not all about style, but neither is it purely or even mainly about grammar (certainly not in the narrow sense preferred by linguists, and not clearly even in the broader sense of 'standards of correctness in writing').

    Chapter 2, 'Elementary rules of usage' is almost entirely about punctuation. (It does include one grammatical rule, about hanging participles.)

    Chapter 3, 'Elementary principles of composition', is about style. That's where 'Omit needless words' comes in. Also 'Avoid a succession of loose sentences', and so on. It's true that some of the advice in this chapter mentions grammatical forms – most notoriously 'Use the active voice' – but that doesn't make it grammatical advice. Strunk wasn't saying that 'My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me' was ungrammatical, only that it was infelicitous.

    Chapter 4, 'A few matters of form' is about formatting.

    Chapter 5, 'Words and expressions commonly misused' is about vocabulary. It begins 'Many of the words and expressions here listed are not so much bad English as bad style, the commonplaces of careless writing'. So I think you can fairly say this chapter is also about style. (Nevertheless a couple of grammatical shibboleths, like 'fewer' and 'however' have managed to creep in.)

    Chapter 6 is about spelling.

    Most of the explicitly grammatical material, like the that/which rule, was introduced by White.

  22. ajay said,

    April 28, 2017 @ 6:19 am

    the feral apostrophe which has infiltrated "throw's" [sic] in my post above needs to be hunted down and shot.

    Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!

  23. Paul Mulshine said,

    April 28, 2017 @ 9:09 am

    What has always bothered me about that quote is the idea that a word can be "needless." That implies a word can have needs. A better choice would be "Omit unneeded words."

  24. Andrew (not the same one) said,

    April 28, 2017 @ 11:53 am

    Has 'needless' ever been used to mean 'not having needs'?

    'Needful', I think, can mean 'having needs', but it certainly has a history of meaning 'needed' (as in the Bible: 'one thing is needful'), so using 'needless' to mean 'unneeded' seems totally reasonable.

  25. Paul Mulshine said,

    April 28, 2017 @ 1:36 pm

    I'm not saying it's wrong. Just that's it's not exactly "le mot juste," as the French say.

    If I had been the editor I would have wanted to change it to "unneeded."
    That sounds better to my ear.

    On the other hand, "unneeded" can be construed as the passive voice – so hated by Strunk and White. Perhaps that explains the awkward-sounding "needless." You don't see that in a lot of contexts. so something must explain it.

  26. wanda said,

    April 28, 2017 @ 2:59 pm

    ""I have spent many hours helping my students to comb through their pages examining every sentence for "needless" words." Wow! I'm happy to declare that I've spent no hours doing this."
    You've never written something that had a word limit? I spend lots of time deleting needless words every time I write an abstract or submit a paper or a grant.

  27. Rodger C said,

    April 29, 2017 @ 11:02 am

    wanda, writing for a word limit is a valuable skill, but it's surely beside the point of this discussion, which is about style in general.

    I'm reminded of a pamphlet I read as an undergrad that was written by people whose business was to write abstracts. (I think the pamphlet was about the business of writing abstracts.) It was an instructive example of writing by people for whom the only stylistic virtue was concision. It read as horribly rushed and staccato; it left me with a breathless feeling.

  28. Fiona said,

    May 1, 2017 @ 10:20 am

    The passage demonstres we should omit needless words when we are taking to others by quoting a part of passage. I totally in favor of this opinion.
    omitimg needless words can help us save time so that improve our talking efficenciecy. One of my friend always like to repeat some sentences which sounds like unimportant. For example, he likes to say i think or yes, that is good. He wouldn't care whether the words are suitable for situation. He just like to say. However it always makes us feel uncomfortable and wast of time to talk with him. In addition, removing needless words of literature can make work better actually. Of course, we can not deny that some of author will repeat some words or sentences to embellish their work to make them better but we should realize they are expertises in writing. They always know the best situation to use needless words to strengthen their work . While when you are using needless words In u proper situation of your essay, you will find it influence your easy or get a low score.
    Removing needless words dose not mean We will talk less, it just a initiative to do like this to improve our talking efficiency. The way to launch this kind of activity is worthy for us to think about.

  29. Nathan said,

    May 1, 2017 @ 2:53 pm

    The advice literature is full of simple rules. That's what the customers want: a royal road to good writing. It's just not realistic.

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