On Being Precise
A bit of a dispute between Wayne Scheiss and George Gopen about Strunk & White’s rule to omit needless words appears at idealawg.
Schiess offers this sentence, recently written by one of his students:
“The witness acted as if he were not all completely there.”
He then poses the question: “The advice to omit needless words seems to apply, no?”
Gopen disagrees. Omit completely, and the sentence suggests the witness was suffering from a mental illness; omit all and it suggests the witness wasn’t paying attention. Either omission, says Gopen, leaves us with a sentence that doesn’t quite say “what this student was trying to say.”
Who knows what this student was trying to say?
The problem with the sentence can’t be solved by tossing this word or that. After the omission, we still don’t know how the witness was acting.
If the student meant to say the witness acted as if he wasn’t paying attention, he should have said that; if he meant to say the witness acted as if he was suffering a mental illness, he should have said that.
That’s my take on it.
