Every word that can be cut, should be cut. “If some grammar books say you can’t do something and others say you can, it means you can,” writes June Casagrande, but she disagrees with Merriam-Webster’s on one rule in particular.įor starters, skilled editors know that, in publishing, conciseness is a virtue. Opinion A Word, Please: Does a trio include? Not if a writer follows the rule So what’s so bad about “with regularity”? A number of things. “With regularity” may be the worst assault against my prose yet. And in that role, I am, from time to time, the victim of editorial malpractice. And it produces a lot of useful examples for anyone who wants to write better or just understand good writing.īut sometimes I wear the other hat, the writer’s hat. In that role, I have a bird’s-eye view of many common writing problems and how to spot and fix them. In this column, I usually share experiences from my work as an editor. I know this because I’m the chagrined writer.
If you had this reaction, congratulations: You have a better sense of language and communication than the real-life editor who changed “a lot” to “with regularity” - much to the writer’s chagrin. It’s vaguely reminiscent of a laxative commercial.
I suspect your inner editor cringed at “with regularity.” It’s stuffy. See if you can tell which phrasing for a light feature article was penned by the writer and which is the edited version. Here’s a before-and-after, but not necessarily in that order, from the world of editing.
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