When I attended Rutgers, blue books were the common exam taking method. We theorized that the more pages that were filled the higher the grade. Therefore it behooved us to write boldly and elaborately with superfluous verbiage to expound on the vast store of applied knowledge that had been acquired during the semester long term for the class. I think you get the drift. This article suggests that we clean up our writing and get to the point. Are we there yet?
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Eliminate clutter from your prose
By Digby Whitman
"Redundancy and wordiness are weeds that can choke your verdant writings
Prose clutter is the greatest enemy of prose clarity. There are as many kinds of clutter as there are of weeds. Most have their hardiest life in business and political writing and speechifying, but two especially morbid growths can trip any but the most wary writer or editor.
"The first type involves overwrought phrasing. The last and most dreadful legacy of Watergate, threatening to linger in our speech long after the speakers' names have been forgotten, is "at this point in time" for "now" and "at that point in time" for "then." But surely nobody, not even a politician, could sink into language as diseased as that without having sickened toward it on a diet of such lesser offenses as these:
"Clutter Clarity"
