Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Often, with the best of intentions, groups of people writing something add needless adjective and adverbs.

There is a group of persons. They are writing directions, a memo, something important or seemingly so.

Someone, earnestly with the best of intentions, suggests, “We should change ‘calculate performance’ to ‘carefully calculate detailed performance.'”

Just add one adjective and one more adverb so that the reader understands how important this is and does a really good job with it.

One: Everyone in this place understands the importance. Everyone is this place does a good job. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be here and we shouldn’t be assigning them work.

Two: extra words don’t add meaning to a document. The opposite occurs. People skim longer documents and read shorter ones.

Strunk and White advised to omit needless words. Many writing teachers since have advocated nouns and verbs over adjectives and adverbs. Still, well-meaning people toss them in like adding sugar to a peach pie. Needless.