{"id":847,"date":"2013-09-16T08:16:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T20:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=847"},"modified":"2013-09-16T08:16:41","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T20:16:41","slug":"less-is-often-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=847","title":{"rendered":"Less is often more"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pencils\"<\/a>I used to work with a chap who, when asked for his opinion on something, would normally start by saying \u2018I cannot tell a lie \u2026.\u2019<\/p>\n

But this was not true.\u00a0 He could tell a lie as well as any of us.\u00a0 Perhaps better than most of us.\u00a0 When he said \u2018I cannot tell a lie,\u2019 he was playing for time.\u00a0 What he meant was \u2018You want my opinion?\u00a0 Hmm, gosh, in that case, I think I\u2019m going to need a moment or two to think about exactly what my opinion might be.\u2019<\/p>\n

Another chap used to pad his speech with the phrase \u2018In point of fact\u2019.\u00a0 And a woman with whom I worked seemed to start every second sentence with \u2018Far be it for me to go against the prevailing wisdom, but \u2026.\u2019<\/p>\n

Most of us have a few of these little empty phrases that we use to fill the \u2018dead air\u2019 while we give ourselves time to think about what we really want to say.\u00a0 And more than a few of us drag these phrases into our writing.<\/p>\n

All we need to say is \u2018If<\/i> the price increases by more than three percent \u2026.\u2019 \u00a0And yet we find our fingers tapping out \u2018In the somewhat unlikely event that<\/i> the price increases by more than three percent\u2026.\u2019 \u00a0Six words where one would have been perfectly adequate.<\/p>\n

I can still recall one of the first op-ed pieces I ever wrote.\u00a0 I submitted 1,500 carefully crafted words.\u00a0 The subeditor chopped it back to about two-thirds of that.\u00a0 And I had the devil\u2019s own job spotting what she had trimmed.<\/p>\n

\u2018But if I try to write it lean, it comes out all wrong,\u2019 one of my friends said recently.\u00a0 And that seems to be true for many people.\u00a0 So write what you need to write in order to say what you want to say.\u00a0 And then see if you can cut out the ten, twenty, thirty percent of the words that don\u2019t really add anything to the clarity or style.\u00a0 You\u2019ll probably be surprised how often less is more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to work with a chap who, when asked for his opinion on something, would normally start by saying \u2018I cannot tell a lie \u2026.\u2019 But this was not true.\u00a0 He could tell a lie as well as any … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}