Clutter - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 16
About This Presentation
Title:

Clutter

Description:

... words, roundabout constructions, pompous decoration and meaningless jargon. It infects us with a tendency to ... Does anything sound pompous or pretentious? ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:251
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 17
Provided by: paulm4
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Clutter


1
Clutterand 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
  • Theres 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.

5
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 ?

6
Work together
to market your crops
7
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

8
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

9
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

10
(No Transcript)
11
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
  • Respectively
  • Yields of rice and maize rose by 3 and 12
    respectively
  • Rice yields rose 3 maize yields went up 12.

12
Yet more clutter
  • Experiencing
  • Weather broadcast At the present time we are
    experiencing precipitation Its raining
  • Dentist Are you experiencing any
    pain? Does it hurt?

13
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 couldnt
  • She was unable to give any information beyond
    the fact that She said

14
Things to avoid
  • More inflation
  • With the aim of adapting To adapt
  • The objective of the project was to The project
    aimed to

15
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
    its beautiful?
  • Tool for cutting clutter
  • Rogets Thesaurus or any other good dictionary of
    synonyms.

16
Three rules for cutting clutter
  • SIMPLIFY
  • SIMPLIFY
  • SIMPLIFY
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com