"Omit Needless Words"

There are a couple books that are sacred to me. One might call them my bibles. Neither of them is the bible.

The first is Henry Mancini's arranging and orchestration book. The second is Strunk and Whites The Elements of Style, about which I'm going to write tonight.

This was required reading in my 11th Grade AP Journalism class. Well, four of the five chapters were. This book helped shape me as a writer. Much like the real bible, I do not follow every rule in it -- such as "avoid passive voice" (Okay, it's actually "Use the active voice", but I like the passive-esque of the way I put it.) and "omit needless words" -- and also like the bible, I go back and re-read it on what feels like an annual basis.

I'm amazed, more than anything, at how dead-on my underlining skills were. I picked the right passages to pay attention to -- and also (again like some religious folks with the bible) -- have have managed to take certain sections to mean what I want them to mean and have made the most out of them, selfishly and self-satisfactorily.

Rule 12: Choose a suitable design and hold to it. I underlined: "Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer... In some cases, the best design is no design..."

Rule 14: Use the Active Voice In the entire 2 page thing, I underlined what I thought was the most important thing: "brevity is a by-product of vigor." Or likely in this case, skimming...

Rule 17: Omit needless words "Vigorous writing is concise" and that not every sentence must be short, but that "every word must tell [something that other words do not]." My corollary to this is Brevity is a gift; I traded mine in for a new discman.

Of course, back to using this book for my needs...

Rule 18: Avoid a succession of loose sentence or as I chose to underline, "A writer may err by making sentences too compact..."

The most valuable section, to me, at least, is the final chapter of the book, "An Approach to Style."

Such great tidbits justify my own writing as part of my voice -- which I'm told can be heard in my writing, and vice versa -- starting with "[style] is a expression of self..." Or better yet, write in a way that comes naturally. (Say, my stream-of-conscious style that I have somehow made work academically, too.)

In the rule Be Clear, they say "When you say something, make sure you have said it." Sounds obvious. And yet, how many things do I read (or write, unintentionally) that don't follow this?

The one thing in the entire book I have highlighted -- whereas everything else is bracketed or underlined in blue pen -- is "If you are deeply troubled and are composing a letter appealing for mercy or for love, you had best not attempt to organize your emotions..."

That's right, my bible tells me that emotions are messy.

Does yours?

Oh, how I love "religion."