Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Back to a basic: write with nouns and verbs. It brings us closer to brevity and clarity. Those are pretty good places to be.

I was reminded of this short and powerful writing tip this past week. And yes, it was from Strunk and White. They used the title of the post in their essential handbook.

A couple of colleagues were debating about keeping or dropping an adverb. One felt that the verb by itself was too weak. The other felt brevity was better. Both were right; both were wrong.

The better way is to find the right verb. There are plenty of verbs in the English language. For example, instead of “walk quickly” we could write “dash.” If we wanted a longer and more picturesque phrase, we could write, “he moved from his desk to the exit like a man seeking a hundred-dollar bill transiting a parking lot.”

Then again, sometimes we just want to put something on paper, check the “done” box, and move on. Oh wait, “move one” is worse than adding an adverb—it is a verb-preposition in place of the right verb. Sigh.

We can do better. Let’s do better.