Recognizing Verbal Clutter: Four Steps to Shorter Documents

Recognizing Verbal Clutter: Four Steps to Shorter Documents

by Susan McCloskey

(reprinted from New York State Bar Journal, November 1998, pp. 8-14 © 1998 Susan McCloskey)

Clients despair. Judges complain. Secretaries roll their eyes and shudder. "This document is too long!" they insist. "Make it shorter!" When the plea goes unanswered, clients ask for summaries, courts set page limits, and secretaries work overtime.

Experts are generous with suggested remedies: "Omit needless words." "Usually, compress what you mean into the fewest words." "Run your pen through every other word on the page. Strike out every slack syllable."1 But how can the writer, staring at a draft on a deadline, quickly identify the words the experts have in mind? How can one develop the sixth sense that recognizes offensive clutter and knows how to excise it?

Clutter lurks in the high-sounding but empty phrase, the redundant word, the overly detailed analysis. It hides behind years of legal tradition that have made it seem necessary, even though it exasperates readers and complicates the task of making the law understandabe to an increasingly critical public.

Legal writers must exercise vigilance, and even courage, to analyze what truly needs to be said and excise the superfluous, even if the offending words are found in a letter or a contract that traces its heritage to the days of a revered founding partner.

Such vigilance takes time as well as effort. In the world of billable hours, it's hard to charge a client for a few hours spent turning a long document into a shorter one. As Pascal observed to the recipient of one of his letters, "I have made this longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter."2 The rewards,