Does your writing feel heavy and cumbersome? You do your best to cut and trim out the fat, but no matter what you do, your sentences remain clunky – almost as if each word is encased in a block of hardened butter. With conciseness being the new beauty standard of writing, audiences can and will judge you for chunky prose. Why? Because modern marketing is expected to be time efficient. With competition so fierce, a business wielding clunky content is at an immediate disadvantage when faced against a competitor with razor-sharp messaging.
Traditional means of cutting down on bloated writing are time consuming and require adopting a new writing mindset… which is not so easy when your content needs trimming and toning immediately! However, what if we were to tell you that there is a special way to cut clutter without having to completely rewrite everything? Join Wordsmith and let’s talk about the “Paramedic Method” of rescuing bloated writing.
Dialing the paramedics
Developed by UCLA English professor Richard Lanham, the “Paramedic Method” is a scalpel that eliminates redundancy, the passive voice and freeloading words/phrases with precision. Do be warned, Lanham’s method will be brutally unkind to fatty first drafts!
Let’s go over the steps:
1. Underline the prepositions (words like to, for, at, about, above and so forth are prepositions that link a time, place, location or spatial relationship with another part of the sentence)
2. Circle the “is” and “to be” verb forms
3. Identify the primary verb and put a box around it
4. Change this action into a simple active verb
5. Move the doer of this verb into the subject of the sentence
6. Eliminate unnecessary and meaningless slow wind-ups (which are subordinate clauses at the beginning of the sentence that don’t do anything)
7. Eliminate any redundancies
Confused? Don’t worry, it’ll make sense with an example. Consider this greasy sentence:
After much deliberation with the higher ups and due to the tightening of our travelling budget, it is with a heavy heart that I wish to say that I am sorry to say that we will not be able to take part in this year’s Pizzafest.
Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Some people do unironically write like this and think it’s acceptable, but the poor sentence is so cluttered that the point is difficult to pick out. Let’s see what the “Paramedic Method” can do to help:
1. Underline the prepositions
After much deliberation with the higher ups and due to the tightening of our travelling budget, it is with a heavy heart that I wish to say that I am sorry that we will not be able to take part in this year’s Pizzafest.
2. Circle the “is” and “to be” verb forms
After much deliberation with the higher ups and due to the tightening of our travelling budget, it (is) with a heavy heart that I wish to say that I (am) sorry that we will not be able to take part in this year’s Pizzafest.
3. Identify the primary verb and put a box around it
After much deliberation with the higher ups and due to the tightening of our travelling budget, it (is) with a heavy heart that I wish to say that I (am) sorry that we [will not] be able to [take part] in this year’s Pizzafest.
4. Change this action into a simple active verb
Will not take part à drop out
5. Move the doer of this verb into the subject of the sentence
We are dropping out…
6. Eliminate unnecessary and meaningless slow wind-ups
After much deliberation with the higher ups and due to the tightening of our travelling budget, it (is) with a heavy heart that I wish to say that I (am) sorry that we [will not] be able to [take part] in this year’s Pizzafest.
7. Eliminate any redundancies
After much deliberation with the higher ups and due to the tightening of our travelling budget, it (is) with a heavy heart that I wish to say that I (am) sorry that we (+are dropping out from) [will not] be able to [take part] in this year’s Pizzafest.
And with that, our patched-up sentence is:
Due to tight travelling budgets, we are dropping out from this year’s Pizzafest.
If we want to completely eliminate slow wind-ups, we can rearrange it like so as well:
We are dropping out from this year’s Pizzafest due to tight travelling budgets.
It’s definitely much cleaner now, is it not? From the “Paramedic Method”, Lanham also devised an equation that he dubs the “lard factor”:
Lard factor = (# of removed words) / (number of words in original sentence)
The lard factor in our example would be a deathly obese 35 / 44 = 79.5%!
Although our example was obviously overexaggerated, even a few seemingly innocent strings of details can quickly bloat a sentence. If we wanted to keep the apology as well, it’d be more prudent to separate it into its own sentence – doing so also helps it avoid sounding like a groveling excuse.
We are dropping out from this year’s Pizzafest due to tight travelling budgets. We sincerely apologise for disappointing our fans – hopefully we will return for next year’s competition.
Professional writing is meant to get the point across as efficiently and effectively as possible. Whenever you want to include any details, ask yourself this: is it absolutely necessary for the reader to know this? Or is it filler that will weigh down my sentence? Give the “Paramedic Method” a try and free your writing from flabby gab – if it still feels heavy and difficult to read, then a consultation with Wordsmith might just be what the doctor ordered!