Clutter!

(I decluttered my title)

Clutter is tolerable. Removing clutter is terrible. 

Clutter is like glitter; once you use it, you will never stop finding it. Clutter is everywhere. If you don’t pay attention to your writing, it ends up in every sentence and paragraph, haunting you until you die (or until you remove it.) I know that clutter is a plague when writing professionally and it needs to be eradicated, but getting rid of it is so difficult. Common clutter includes the words you, your,  this, that, those, so, very, of, for, infinitives, and much more.

Removing the clutter was bad, but reading the excerpt from “On Writing Well” was nice. I learned a lot from his writing, and I liked how he used clutter to write about not using clutter. He also included a lot of helpful advice not related to clutter, like how to write with your own voice and to write what you want. Zinsser’s writing was very easy to read, which was a plus.

Clutter affects society by dumbing down the writing. Instead of stating the truth, authors might add fluffy clutter around it to make it less real and intense. I am much more aware of clutter now than I was before. I wish I could go back to August where I had no knowledge of clutter so I wouldn’t feel so guilty writing ANYTHING that might contain clutter (like these blog posts). Ignorance is bliss. I haven’t actively gone out of my way to remove clutter from my assignments, but for future essays I will definitely keep an eye out for it.

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