By the Power of B.I.T.S.O.W.

Since Brevity Is the Soul of Wit

Love your backspace key

Way back in the 1970s I took my undergraduate degree at New York University. As part of my English Composition 101 course, whatever it was called, we read George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. Therein he proposed six rules for truthful and comprehensible writing. In this article I will limit myself numbers one, three, and four. For the sake of brevity, of course. Wait — this is a six-minute read? May G-d forgive me.

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

I chose these three because in my work as a MuddyUm editor, I feel as if I never stop writing private notes about violations of these rules, in particular number three.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

I’m not here to aggravate you or bust your nut. Excess and unnecessary words are not show-stoppers like the lack of a kicker or a period at the end of the subtitle. If you take no action, then we move on. If you come back and reply with, “no, leave it in, I like it,” or something like that it will make my unpaid job easier. If you take no action I may do it myself if the situation is straight-forward enough.

I would not be doing my job if I didn’t point out the detritus scattered around your electronic page. We all create such textual dust bunnies. It’s almost automatic. I go back over my own writing many times, chasing the little dears, sweeping them away with my electronic dustpan and brush, that is, my backspace key. As MuddyUm editor, I perform the same office for you. Let us begin with a few

Examples

These came from actual articles submitted to MuddyUm. I tried to keep them so short as to be unrecognizable, but if you recognize one of your own I hope you will forgive me.

“Anyway, I’m sharing my plan here instead.”

Why not “I’m sharing my plan here instead”? The word anyway adds nothing. It’s distracting. If your reader is strolling along happily, why toss a stumbling block under their feet?

“I did ask.”

Why not “I asked”?

“So, it will be painful to write.”

Beginning a sentence with so can make sense if there is a causal relationship with the previous sentence. However, in this example so began a paragraph, which is supposed to be a new thought. So, if you start a paragraph with So, I’ll flag it.

“My husband and I have purchased yoga mats for when we travel.”

“My husband and I have purchased yoga mats for travel” cuts two words and makes fine sense. Notice that I could have said “cuts two words and it makes fine sense,” but why?

A short sentence is a punchy sentence, and a punchy sentence is a long way down the road to funny. Some of the best jokes are one-liners, like Henny Youngman’s droll, “Take my wife. Please.” or “A bar was walked into by the passive voice.”

Which brings me to the passive voice.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

“A bar was walked into by the passive voice” works because it turns on that very voice. However, in most cases, the passive voice kills a joke precisely because it is wordy when compared to the active. Humor needs to bounce along, that is, it needs activity. Activity distracts the reader so that when the joke comes it’s a bit of a surprise and therefore funnier. The passive voice has the additional problem that it is a common tool of fascists. I will return to this farther down.

“I had read online that…”

By removing had you make two salutary changes — removing a word and making the voice active. In general, using the passive voice adds words.

I see way fewer avoidable passive voice constructions among MuddyUm submissions than unnecessary words. That gives me hope for humanity. The passive voice is what sleazy politicians use when they want to duck responsibility. “Mistakes were made.”¹ By who? No one in particular — they just sort of happened. They were made.

“It was decided that the prisoners would be liquidated.”²

This is what I meant when I said the passive voice is a tool for fascists. When I find myself using the passive voice I quote this creepy-as-fuck sentence to myself and ask if I really want to number myself among the sort of people who say it was decided that the prisoners would be liquidated. This goads my search for a better way.

Note that we decided to kill the prisoners would be shorter. Fascists tend toward prolixity — that could be another reason they are so fond of the passive voice. It could be the other way around though. Perhaps their wordiness emerges through their use of the passive voice.

More innocently, technical writing makes extensive use the passive voice.³ As an engineer I wrote a goodly quantity of technical material. The passive voice helped me minimize the time I had to spend in the pursuit of such tedium.

Tedium isn’t funny. Neither is fascism, so don’t be a tedious fascist. Avoid the passive voice. Unless you are writing a spoof technical article in which you, as a comic device, make exaggerated use of that same voice. Hey — that’s my idea!

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

In this way Orwell cautions us against the use of stock phrases and cliches. I culled the following examples from an hour or two on the MuddyUm submission queue, so again, if you recognize yourself, please forgive me. I’ll never tell.

whispering sweet nothings

a one-size-fits-all approach.

I am a firm believer that

The elephant in the room

put lipstick on a pig

I cannot leave out my favorite, the one I so dearly love to hate. Mercifully, I have yet to find this in the MuddyUm submission queue,

I’m just going to come right out and say it.

That I counsel against the use of these tiresome devices makes it clear that I am a horrible person. I might as well tell you, “Try to make less money!” Thinking up something original to say takes time. A quick reach into the cliche closet will get your article out faster. The more articles you crank out, the more money you make happens to be the only reliable make-money-on-Medium advice out there.

Yet I maintain that you should follow Orwell’s advice. Cliche writing is lazy writing, plus you are leaving jokes on the table. There is humor to be had turning them, if not on their heads, then around once or twice.

whispering nothing sweet

a one-size-fits-none approach

I am a believer in firms that

The roominess in the elephant

Or in combination

You buttered your bread now lie in it.⁴

They don’t mean the same thing but depending on your desired meaning perhaps you can shake out one of those old rugs and walk on it. The oblique reference to the recognizable cliche will raise a smile, like with a pop culture reference.

I want my funny writing to be funnier, and I want your funny writing to be funnier. One of the easiest ways, perhaps the easiest way, to make our writing funnier is by making it shorter. Shakespeare gave us the goal — brevity. Orwell showed us how to achieve it.

¹ A few of you will recall who famously said this when describing one of his administration’s most egregious fuck-ups.

² I lifted this example from the Orwell essay mentioned in my introduction. Note that I did not write “This example was lifted.” I take responsibility. I lifted it.

³ Notice that I did not go with “In technical writing the passive voice is used extensively.”

⁴

Special thanks to Holly J See and Amy Sea.