Quotes About Wordiness

If you consistently write 'The sun set' rather than 'The sun sank slowly in the bright western sky,' your story will move three times as fast. Of course, there are times you want the longer version for atmosphere - but not many. Wordiness not only kills pace; it bores readers.

LOQUACITY, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.

Doesn´t she have diarrhea of the mouth?

future. As an adjective, the word is often used unnecessarily: 'He refused to say what his future plans were' (Daily Telegraph); 'The parties are prepared to say little about how they see their future prospects' (The Times). In both sentences, and nearly all others like them, future adds nothing and should be deleted.

Your letter] is a morass of confusion, wordiness, overloaded sentences and strained metaphors… [The greater part of it is incomprehensible], or else it is that I have neither the time nor the patience to dig the principle sentence out of the surrounding forests of subordinate clauses." – Vera Brittain to her husband George Catlin, 1925.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

I detest so much ... those persons, who insist upon telling you everything - who labor every point, as the lawyers say, as if they thought all excellence consisted in length.

Verbosity was an established Victorian trait.

Unnecessary repetition, redundancies, and near redundancies also contribute to wordiness. For example: basic fundamentals (fundamentals); consensus of opinion (consensus); potential promise (potential); past history (history); personal friendship (friendship); total effect (effect); end result (result).