Writing Book 6 · Lesson 22

Wordiness

Wordiness is words that occupy space without adding meaning.

What you read today

Essay Voyage, pages 95–100 — the chapter Wordiness.

This lesson's text is the book itself. Your teacher has the pages; read them with the class, then do the work on your sheet.

Remember
Read it as a writer: not only what happens, but what the author did to make it happen that way.

Ask yourself: “What does this word do that the sentence would miss?”

Delete a word. If the meaning survives, leave it deleted.