False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Interrogate your sentences and remove 
unnecessary words like adverbs and 
parasitical prepositions.
If you’ve worked in an academic, bureaucratic, 
political or technological setting, then there’s a 
good chance you’re familiar with writing that’s 
been puffed up with unnecessary words. 
Sometimes these superfluous words are used in 
an effort to sound intellectual or cutting edge; in 
other cases, they’ve been deliberately employed 
to confuse the reader.
Believe it or not, it’s common for voting 
proposals to be written in a deliberately 
confusing manner so that bewildered citizens will 
vote for a law that they would otherwise never 
vote for.
Confusing language is full of unnecessary words 
such as adverbs, adjectives, parasitical 
prepositions and abstract nouns. As one of the 
world’s most successful authors, Stephen King, 
once said: “The road to hell is paved with 
adverbs.”
So the simple rule of thumb is to ration 
adjectives and raze adverbs.
Adverbs are words like “exactly,” “precisely” and 
“really,” and, in most cases, you’ll find that you 
can remove these words while losing nothing of 
value. Instead of writing, “the price was exactly 
five dollars” just say, “the price was five dollars.”
Generally speaking, adjectives are adverbs 
without the “-ly” at the end, such as “precise” 
and “exact,” and should be used sparingly.
Remember: a writer’s job is to express a clear 
thought. When she does this well, she will 
naturally avoid superlatives. A writer shouldn’t 
say an event was “shocking,” but explain why it 
shocked people.
Parasitical prepositions are another type of 
useless word.
These appear after perfectly functional words 
and add nothing of value. The words “up” and 
“out” are common ones. So the next time you 
write, “Let’s meet up at the café and test out the 

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new app,” why not save a few words and write, 
“Let’s meet at the café and test the new app!”
And then there are abstract nouns. These words 
have no concrete definition and therefore fail to 
provide any clarity to your sentences. They 
include: “regard,” “indication,” “facilities” and 
“issue.”
Be specific! Don’t say you “take issue” with 
something when you can tell us exactly how you 
feel.