You’ll find a lot of advice for writers on twitter. The guidance is often sound, if somewhat simplistic, but its click-bait-y bullet-point approach can be a problem because there are as many exceptions as there are rules, neither of which can be boiled down to a few sound bites.
The other day I saw this:
“Using extraneous words or phrases can make your writing clunky and hard to read. Simplify your sentences. Make sure each word is necessary and serves a purpose. If you can take a word out without changing the meaning of the sentence, cut it.”
I think this is well-meant, and essentially correct. By definition, an unnecessary word should be removed. The advice is almost tautological. But the last part – if you can take a word out without changing the meaning of the sentence, cut it – rang alarm bells for me because a sentence carries more than just meaning: another layer, deeper, harder to define, more fundamental to its existence and ignored at its peril. We are speaking here of a sentence’s rhythm, its poetry, and its musical line. These things are what truly determine word count, eclipsing mere simplification. Brevity is not necessarily the same thing as clarity.
Perhaps the person who tweeted the above would agree. A word that aids rhythm is not unnecessary. My concern is that the idea of reducing word count based solely on meaning might be misunderstood by novice writers. It’s an accountant’s approach to sentence construction, initially beguiling because it’s an easy thing to do, giving you instant results.
But I would caution against leaping in without carefully considering the musical impact of removing a word. Sentences are not mere carriers of information but are melodic devices whose elegance and beauty enables that information to be more easily understood. This might require the removal of words, but it might just as easily require the addition of them. Songwriters often have to add an otherwise extraneous word in order to fit the melody. Writers need to do the same thing.