Paul Mundy and Bob Huggan 1 Clutter…and simplicity

2 What is clutter? Clutter is a disease that strangles language in unnecessary words, roundabout constructions, pompous decoration and meaningless jargon It infects us with a tendency to inflate and sound important The disease is usually worse in better educated, higher-ranking people

3 What the airline pilot said “We are presently anticipating our trajectory passing through considerable atmospheric turbulence.” What he meant “There’s a storm ahead and it may get bumpy.”

4 What the university president said “We have been experiencing very considerable potentially explosive expressions of dissatisfaction on issues only partially related to academics” What he meant “The students have been hassling us about various things.”

George Orwell’s rules for writing (1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print Never use a long word where a short one will do If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out 5

George Orwell’s rules for writing (2) Never use the passive where you can use the active Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous 6

7 Strip every sentence to its cleanest components Cut every word that serves no function  Needless to say, it is necessary for us to reduce the deficit = …? Turn long words into short words  Interminable dialogue = …? Cut adverbs that carry the same meaning as the verb  He ran quickly to the bank = …? Turn passive sentences into active sentences  The trees were being fallen from by leaves = …?

8 to market your crops Work together

9 Fighting clutter Like fighting weeds– the writer is always slightly behind New varieties sprout overnight “Now” used to be now Today, now = at this point in time at the present time currently

10 More clutter Up  Head up a committee= Head a committee  Face up to problems =Face problems Personal  My personal friend=My friend  My personal assistant=My assistant  To my personal advantage=To my advantage

11 Spot the unneeded words  Lessons learned= Lessons  Future plans=Plans  Background information=Background (or leave it out)  Very unique=Unique  First introduced=Introduced  New innovation=Innovation  Early beginnings=Start

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13 Words to watch Context  In the Vietnamese context=In Vietnam Level  At the farm level=On the farm Case  In the case of sorghum, =Sorghum yields yields rose by 10%rose by 10%

14 Words to watch Respectively  Yields of rice and maize rose by 3% and 12% respectively  Rice yields rose 3%; maize yields went up 12%. Work  The NGO has worked to support  The NGO has supported  The organization worked to promote the sharing of lessons…  The organization shared lessons…

15 Yet more clutter Experiencing  Weather broadcast: “At the present time we are experiencing precipitation”=It’s raining  Dentist: “Are you experiencing any pain?”=“Does it hurt?”

16 Things to avoid Avoid sentences that begin with…  I might add…  It should be pointed out that…  It is interesting to note that… Avoid inflated prepositions and conjunctions Examples  With the possible exception of…Except  For the reason that…Because  He totally lacked the ability to…He couldn’t  She was unable to give any information beyond the fact that…She said

17 Things to avoid More inflation  With the aim of adapting…To adapt  The objective of the project was to… The project aimed to

Get rid of the unnecessary words To acknowledge these initiatives, to learn from them and to prevent double work, the network has been active in supporting the documentation of a number of these. The network has documented some of these initiatives. 18

19 Checklist for avoiding clutter Re-examine every sentence you write Is every word doing useful work? Can any thought be expressed more briefly? Does anything sound pompous or pretentious? Are you keeping any word only because you think it’s beautiful? Tool for cutting clutter  Roget’s Thesaurus or any other good dictionary of synonyms.

20 Three rules for cutting clutter SIMPLIFY