From the course: Writing with Flair: How to Become an Exceptional Writer

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Multiply entities

Multiply entities

From the course: Writing with Flair: How to Become an Exceptional Writer

Start my 1-month free trial

Multiply entities

“

- And the other way we unnecessarily complicate our writing is by something I call multiplying entities beyond necessity. We also tack unnecessary descriptive words onto a sentence, like this, Air New Zealand's international long-haul flights division is doing a lot better. Now weed out the unnecessary descriptors so the reader doesn't have to wade through too much detail in order to extract the main idea. Here's what I get. Air New Zealand's long-haul division is doing a lot better. For a New Zealand airline, it's international division is very likely its long-haul division, right, it's a small country, so you probably don't need to say flights, as well, if most people will know the company is an airline. Now here's another made-up example entities multiplied beyond necessity. This is the US company's first overseas partnership since it acquired Italian gourmet food concept store chain Gourmet Foods. Now it's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? We've got gourmet food concept store chain…

Contents