The first thing that the professors in the broadcast journalism classes that I took in college hammered into my brain, was the lesson of writing tight. If you need ten words to express an idea, use them. If you can express it in seven, use seven.

Let’s take a look at an example: Read the first sentence of this post again. It works. It’s okay. But can we tighten it? Yes. A lot. Try this:

The first thing my broadcast journalism profs hammered into my brain was to write tight.

You probably know to eliminate the word ‘that’ whenever possible. But look at the other words I took out: ‘classes’, ‘the lesson of’, ‘I took’. We went from 26 words to 15 words without losing the message or meaning of the sentence. This is the area where beginning writers can make the biggest leap forward in their skills.

Can cutting out words be overdone? Of course. Sometimes so much is sliced off there’s nothing left but the bone. But if we are to err, I would suggest doing it on the side of brevity, rather than on the side of pontification overload. I fight this all the time myself and have to continually self-edit in order to kill the words that are unnecessary and dull my prose.

Now, if you really want to play, stop here. Take everything I’ve written above and see if you can tighten it. After you’ve finished yours, take a peek at what I did:

The first thing my broadcast journalism profs hammered into my brain was to write tight.

If you can express your ideas in ten words, great. Seven words? Even better. Read the first sentence of this post again. It’s okay. But can we tighten it? Yes: The first thing my broadcast journalism profs hammered into my brain was to write tight.

You know to eliminate ‘that’, when possible, but look at what else I cut: ‘classes’, ‘the lesson of’, ‘I took’. We went from 26 words to 15 words without losing the message. Learning this skill is typically the biggest area of growth for beginning writers.

Can it be overdone? Of course. But if we are to err, I would suggest doing it on the side of brevity. I fight this myself and have to continually self-edit to kill unnecessary words that make my prose dull.

Want to play a game? Stop here. Take my post above and tighten it. When you finish, check out my attempt:

First time: 249 words Second time: 166.

Did we lose anything with the 166 word version?

Remember: Always write tight.

Tags: Great writing, He Blogs, She Blogs, tight writing