Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose. — William Zinsser

Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.

Author: William Zinsser

Insight: We've all been trained to think more is better—more details, more explanation, more words to show we've done the work. But anyone who's actually tried to communicate something important knows the opposite is true. The words that stick aren't the ones piled highest; they're the ones that do actual work. Reading your own writing with this lens changes everything. You start noticing the filler, the padding, the words you threw in because they sounded official or because you weren't quite sure what you meant yet. This matters beyond writing. When you're explaining something to a friend, defending a choice to your boss, or even just thinking through a problem in your own head, clarity suffers when you let unnecessary words accumulate. They're like clutter in a room—they don't just take up space, they make it harder to move around and find what actually matters. The hardest part isn't adding words; it's having the confidence to strip them away and trust that what's left will be enough. Sometimes it takes cutting half your words to realize you only needed a quarter of them to begin with.