12. Reduce clutter
Many people clutter their writing with too much punctuation, with too many levels of speech, or with signs rather than words. Too much worry about conciseness may sometimes lead you into trouble: you may begin to mutilate the language you're using. Or sometimes, your first draft may too closely follow the development of your first ideas, which is to say that you may load the writing with parentheses or with other devices implying second thoughts. Your job is not to show your reader how you came up with ideas--to show, for instance, that one idea occurred inside another idea--but instead is to communicate clearly those ideas to the reader.
In presentation, though not in thinking, prefer the conventional. Avoid the textual potholes described below.
- Avoid sign language in sentences; write words. Beware of i.e., e.g., slashes ("/"), and arithmetical signs.
- Avoid telegraphic style. Use the and a where they belong. Keep the writing smooth.
- Write complete sentences, unless you are using outline or bullet format.
- Reduce your use of parentheses, especially long parenthetical
breaks in the middle of sentences. Integrate ideas smoothly into
sentences. The usual solutions for ideas within parentheses are
threefold:
- recast the sentence to work the parentheses to the end, where they usually prove needless
- make a separate sentence out of the parenthetical material
- drop the parenthetical idea
==>Guidelines