Good Writing Practice
As an editor, I have been battling against verbosity, redundant modifiers, and ‘buzz’ words for many years. New terms and turns of phrase or new meanings for words pop up all the time. Many of them have come with the information technology age and many of them stick, whether we like it or not. Some of them really do fill a gap, like ‘to enable’ meaning ‘switching something on’ or ‘make something functional’. Some are supposed to sound good because they are polysyllabic but don't, like ‘leveraging someone's help’; and some are evidence of sloppy and indiscriminate use of words. Others come into use because a term has been so devalued by overuse that it no longer sounds right unless used with a modifier (e.g. absolutely essential).
Download Full Article
You must be a member of EMWA in order to download the full article.
EMWA members please log in to download the full article.
If you would like to become a member of EMWA, please join here.