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Clutter and the Discipline of Omission

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Clutter and the Discipline of Omission

The central discipline of writing is not addition — it is removal. Most writers approach a draft as an act of construction, but the deeper craft is a sustained act of excavation: finding the essential sentence underneath the sprawl of words that surrounds it. Two of the most rigorous nonfiction writers of the twentieth century, William Zinsser and John McPhee, arrived at the same conclusion from different angles: the quality of a piece of writing is determined primarily by what is left out.

Zinsser’s Diagnosis: Clutter as Disease

William Zinsser opens On Writing Well with a structural claim that runs through every chapter:

“Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.”

The metaphor of disease is precise — clutter is not an aesthetic problem but a functional one. It prevents meaning from reaching the reader. Zinsser identifies three sources:

1. Words that serve no function. Adverbs that restate what the verb already communicates (“blared loudly” — blare already implies loudness). Adjectives that describe qualities inherent in the noun (“yellow daffodils,” “precipitous cliffs”). Qualifiers that weaken rather than refine: a bit, sort of, kind of, quite, rather, pretty much. Each of these is a small leak; collectively they drain the confidence from prose.

“The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what — these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.”

2. Long words that could be short ones. Zinsser observes that there is a systematic tendency to choose multisyllabic, Latinate words over shorter Anglo-Saxon equivalents — not because the long words are more precise, but because they feel more authoritative. The instinct toward “utilization” instead of “use,” “implementation” instead of “action,” “experiencing” instead of “feeling” is an anxious performance of expertise that costs readers real effort.

3. Institutional pomposity. Organizations write with no one at the center — passive constructions in which no one does anything (“pre-feasibility studies are in the paperwork stage”), concept nouns that abstract away any human agent, throat-clearing phrases that announce what you’re about to say instead of saying it: I might add, it should be pointed out, it is interesting to note.

“Just as insidious are all the word clusters with which we explain how we propose to go about our explaining: ‘I might add,’ ‘It should be pointed out,’ ‘It is interesting to note.’ If you might add, add it. If it should be pointed out, point it out.”

The test Zinsser prescribes is simple: examine every word. Ask not “does this word hurt?” but “does this word do new work that the surrounding words don’t already do?” The default answer should be no, and the word should go.

McPhee’s Principle: Writing Is Selection

John McPhee arrives at omission from a different angle — not as an editor of excess but as a collector of material who must then decide what to keep:

“Writing is selection. Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language. Now keep going. What is your next word? Your next sentence, paragraph, section, chapter? Your next ball of fact. You select what goes in and you decide what stays out. At base you have only one criterion: If something interests you, it goes in — if not, it stays out.”

This is selection at the macro level — which subjects, which anecdotes, which scenes make it into the final piece. McPhee’s claim is that the writer’s subjectivity (what genuinely interests you) is the only reliable guide through the mountain of available material. Market research cannot tell you what to include; only authentic engagement can.

The implication: the writer who tries to include everything interesting to someone will produce an incoherent piece. The writer who includes only what is interesting to them will produce work that resonates with the readers who share that sensibility — and no one else needs to be served.

McPhee also articulates the power of restraint in a different register:

“To cause a reader to see in her mind’s eye an entire autumnal landscape, for example, a writer needs to deliver only a few words and images — such as corn shocks, pheasants, and an early frost. The creative writer leaves white space between chapters or segments of chapters. The creative reader silently articulates the unwritten thought that is present in the white space.”

The discipline of omission here is not merely about cutting clutter — it is about trusting the reader to complete the picture. Every word on the page forecloses a word in the reader’s imagination. The writer who over-explains has taken something away. The writer who trusts the reader gives something.

Zinsser’s Structural Insight: Omission Applies to Ideas Too

The discipline of omission operates not only at the word and sentence level but at the level of the entire piece. Zinsser:

“Every writing project must be reduced before you start to write… Therefore think small. Decide what corner of your subject you’re going to bite off, and be content to cover it well and stop.”

“As for what point you want to make, every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five — just one.”

This is perhaps the most counterintuitive application of the principle. The writer who has done extensive research feels obligated to report all of it. But the obligation runs the other direction: all that research provides the writer with surplus material, and the surplus is what makes it possible to choose only what is essential.

McPhee states this explicitly when discussing the relationship between research and final text: “Readers should always feel that you know more about your subject than you’ve put in writing.” The unwritten knowledge is not waste — it is the foundation of authority.

Connection to Seth Godin’s Practice

The discipline of omission extends beyond writing craft into the broader creative practice. Seth Godin, writing about creative work, identifies a related principle:

“Instead of focusing on a masterpiece, ask yourself, What’s the smallest unit of available genius? What’s the bar of music, the typed phrase, the personal human interaction that makes a difference?”

The smallest unit of genius is not achieved by adding more — it is achieved by reducing until only the essential remains. This is the creative equivalent of Zinsser’s stripping.

Practical Technique: The Multi-Pass Edit

Zinsser describes a specific editing approach:

“Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging on to something useless just because you think it’s beautiful? Simplify, simplify.”

The questions to ask of every sentence:

  • Does this word do new work, or does it repeat what’s already there?
  • Is there a shorter word that carries the same meaning?
  • Does this sentence advance the reader to the next idea, or does it slow them down?
  • Am I explaining something the reader can figure out from context?

Most first drafts, Zinsser observes, can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice. This is not an exaggeration — it is the result of decades of editing other people’s work.

Tension with Thoroughness

There is a real tension between the discipline of omission and the imperative to gather surplus material. Both Zinsser and McPhee are clear that you must collect more than you use — the discipline of omission operates after the collection phase, not instead of it. Writers who omit the research phase in the name of concision produce thin, credibility-free prose. The surplus is what makes the final selection authoritative.

The Deepest Principle

Underlying all the specific techniques is a philosophical claim about what writing is for. Zinsser puts it directly:

“Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. It’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English.”

Clutter is not primarily a stylistic problem — it is an epistemological one. The words that do no work are the trace evidence of ideas that were not fully thought through. The discipline of omission is, at its core, the discipline of thinking: refusing to move on until you know what you mean.

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