Repetition—far too often avoided—can be a powerful rhetorical device. It can bring order and balance to a sentence’s parts. And it can rivet a word to the reader’s frontal lobe with more impact than elegant variation ever could. This week’s Tip is on repeating a word.

Repeating a word increases its power in the sentence by forcing the reader to reconsider its meaning and that of the words it frames or modifies. Consider this example, from Henry Luce’s The American Century:

In this whole matter of War and Peace especially, we have been at various times and in various ways false to ourselves, false to each other, false to the facts of history, and false to the future.

The string of falses hammers the point and instills rhythm.

This edit counteracts the tendency of some writers to prefer synonyms over repetition. Perhaps intended to show a commend of language, this approach can confuse:

A delightful fairy tale has taken hold lately in some economic policy circles: the economy is poised for a glorious burst of sustained, 1960s-style growth without inflation. It’s a story told by a spectrum of influential figures, from conservatives to liberal luminaries. Like most good fables, this one features a horrible monster who is blocking the path to eternal happiness. That would be the chairman of the Fed, who cannot see that the economic terrain has shifted.

The three terms—tale, story, fable—force the reader to figure out whether the three are different or the same. The example is doctored slightly from the original. Sticking with fairy tale, tale, and tales, as Paul Krugman did in The New York Times Magazine, makes the passage more coherent—with the repeated terms binding the sentences:

A delightful fairy tale has taken hold lately in some economic policy circles: the economy is poised for a glorious burst of sustained, 1960s-style growth without inflation. It’s a tale told by a spectrum of influential figures, from conservatives to liberal luminaries. Like most good tales, this one features a horrible monster who is blocking the path to eternal happiness. That would be the chairman of the Fed, who cannot see that the economic terrain has shifted.

Last week I wrote about sentinel nouns, which push a working noun into a prepositional phrase. Many of those sentinel nouns also turn up as weak nouns, following a noun adjective that should displace them.

Consider this, from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

Corporations have pared back their debt burden, but consumers owe more than ever.

Why not delete burden? Perhaps because it’s not the absolute amount of debt but the ratio of debt to cash flow. But even if that’s the case, readers would not be led astray by simply writing debt.

I confess that I spent a couple of hours hunting for weak nouns in this week’s The Economist and found none. But they do turn up frequently in the writing of our clients at large organizations.

 

Poverty levels increased                                  Poverty increased

Price levels rose                                             Prices rose

For corporate responsibility purposes               For corporate responsibility

Part of a bank workout strategy                        Part of a bank workout

Light manufacturing activities                           Light manufacturing

Singapore’s growth performance                     Singapore’s growth

In the telecommunications sector                      In telecommunications

Policies to curb inflationary pressures               Policies to curb inflation

Foreign exchange carry-trade markets              Foreign exchange carry trade

Easier money supplies                                    Easier money

More flexible exchange rate regimes                More flexible exchange rates

 

As with others of these edits, we’re compiling a list of weak nouns, identifying when to cut them and when to leave them. Please send us any you might find.

One of the main tasks in editing your writing is ridding sentences of unnecessary words. So, as I read the Lexington column in this week’s Economist, the following sentence caught my eye.

He [Obama] wants to use the combination of his soaring rhetoric and his broad appeal to change the weather of American politics—hence his admiration for Mr Reagan’s power to transform politics, if not for what he did with that power.

Combination is what I call a sentinel noun, announcing the impending arrival of a stronger noun (or two), relegated to a prepositional phrase. The standard edit here is to cut the combination of, propelling the reader to soaring rhetoric and broad appeal.

He [Obama] wants to use his soaring rhetoric and his broad appeal to change the weather of American politics—hence his admiration for Mr Reagan’s power to transform politics, if not for what he did with that power.

The sentinel noun doesn’t turn up too often in the well written and edited Economist, but elsewhere in this week’s are:

For many, the act of voting will be even more solitary.

Voting’s an act, so the act of is dispensable but defensible. And:

The process of choosing the next leader of the world’s most powerful country, in other words, is still at an early stage. But it has already delivered big surprises.

Choosing’s a process, so the process of is again dispensable but defensible. If the phrase is dispensed with, the two sentences could read:

Choosing the next leader of the world’s most powerful country, in other words, is still at an early stage. But the process has already delivered big surprises.

In the piece on financial regulation, also in this week’s Economist, the noun is the point, not a sentinel:

…the patchwork of national rules and regulators that govern them.

…to redesign the architecture of global finance.

The chances of an effective global regulatory regime are…

…the result of inadequate national supervision…

…the lack of teamwork between…

The origins of today’s problems lie not…

But take another look at the last example. There’s a case for cutting The origins of and changing the rest to Today’s problems arise not from…, or something similar. If I were short on space, I’d likely make that edit.

So these are some good uses, when the construction the + noun + of adds meaning. But it becomes useless when the noun isn’t working but is only announcing. As in, the problem of poverty, as if poverty isn’t a problem. And as in, the issue of early primaries, as if early primaries aren’t an issue.

The point is that a the + noun + of construction should become a cue for taking a closer look. Here is a starting list of sentinels to watch for and cut, along with the articles and prepositions that prop them up:

the act of                              the experience of                 the presence of

the adoption of                     the extent of                         the problem of

the amount of                       the field of                            the process of

the area of                            the form of                           the prospect of

the case of                          the functioning of                  the purpose of

the challenge of                   the idea of                            the question of

the character of                    the importance of                  the range of

the combination of                the introduction of                  the rate of

the concept of                      the issue of                          the set of

the course of                        the level of                           the strategy of

the degree of                        the magnitude of                  the sum of

the development of                the nature of                          the use of

the element of                      the number of                       the way of

the establishment of             the pattern of

the existence of

 

(Our ClearEdits software flags all these sentinel nouns.)

Last Tuesday’s post was on that as a conjunction joining a clause to a verb—more specifically to a transitive verb, which demands an object. I began to identify when using that (rather than omitting it) is usual, unusual, or contextual.

Today I look at using that to join a clause to linking verbs (is, was, will be, and so on), to complement the sentence’s subject.

Here are two examples from “The Moral Instinct,” by Stephen Pinker, in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.

The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal.

The convention seems to be to use that to connect the complement in all such instances.

(Note that Pinker omitted that between rules and it, but this missing that is a pronoun, not a conjunction. To distinguish the conjunction from the pronoun, see whether which could work in that’s place. If it can, then that is a pronoun and can often be omitted. More in a few weeks on that as a pronoun.)

The other hallmark is that people feel that those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished.

Again, the first that connects the complement (people feel that those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished) to the linking verb is. Pinker could not omit it.

But what about the second that connecting its clause (those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished) as the object of the transitive verb feel? Its use is contextual, and in this context it would not be omitted because of the awkward and ambiguous people feel those and because of the clause (who commit immoral acts) separating the subject (those) from its verb (deserve).

Is using that with linking verbs invariable? Or are there instances when it could be omitted?

I’m looking for some of those instances. If you find one, please send it along.

Note

Some linking verbs (seem, appear) can also be transitive, as in the example above. To distinguish the linking from the transitive, see whether is, are, or am could work in its place. If it can, then the verb is linking. If it can't, the verb is transitive, so you would follow the conventions for that with such a verb.

Much of writing is connecting words and phrases doing the same work—multiple subjects, verbs, modifiers, objects. And most writers connect them with conjunctions and commas in common ways. We’re going to show you some uncommon connections—what we call deft connections.

A simple tip is to order pairs and series from short to long. Most of us spit out compound subjects and predicates and the elements of pairs or series as they come out of our mind—haphazardly. You can make your writing clearer by rearranging those elements from short to long and from simple to compound. Start by counting the words of each phrase, and arrange them from short to long.

Here’s a nice example from Andrew Sullivan’s Atlantic Monthly feature on Barack Obama:

Obama, moreover, is no saint. He has flaws and tics: Often tired, sometimes crabby, intermittently solipsistic, he’s a surprisingly uneven campaigner.

The series goes from short to long, both in words and complexity, drawing the reader into the more difficult “intermittently solipsistic” rather than leading with such a mouthful.

Another example:

In 2007 I traveled to Washington, D.C., Miami, and New York.

That’s okay, but notice how the eye pauses on Washington, then D.C., then Miami and New York. Another ordering, perhaps easier on the reader, would have been:

In 2007 I traveled to Miami, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Notice how readers can see all three cities without pausing. So the next time you write, try ordering your pairs and series to ease your readers’ work. But there are some exceptions: groups of words or phases listed chronologically (breakfast, lunch, dinner) or alphabetically to avoid bias (New Zealand, Russia, Tuvalu).

Perhaps 95% of basic sentence-level edits are straightforward and rote—repeatable, habitual, even Pavlovian.

Editors often can’t turn those reflexes off. That’s why you may find your editor friends grousing about playbills and restaurant menus.

The good news is that you can learn the patterns of editing (what we call standard edits)—not to annoy your friends by critiquing the church newsletter, but because doing so is the fastest way to write clearly and quickly.

That’s the foundation of the ClearWriter system. And we’ve already done much of the work, by compiling the standard edits we’ve discovered in our daily work as writers and editors.

Consider phrases like the field of (as in “the field of economics”), the area of (“the area of education research”), the problem of (“the problem of poverty”), and the like.

These phrases are fat that lards your writing.

Economics is a field; education research, an area; poverty, a problem.

Cut them.

Also easily fixed with standard edits is the tendency to use overweight words—words that are long, abstract, or obscure—where simpler words will do. So change component to part, lengthy to long, and utilization to use.

Such changes may seem to make little difference, and it’s true that they reflect preferences rather than rules. But you’ll be amazed at the results when you iterate these edits over a manuscript.

In future blog entries, we’ll talk more about the patterns we’ve found in editing. The best places to learn about them, however, are in our online writing training and in Edit Yourself, by ClearWriter founder Bruce Ross-Larson. Another good resource is our editing software, ClearEdits, which puts an editor inside your computer—taking advantage of the repeatability of our standard edits.