Today I measured my waistline. Not my own wasteline, but that of my writing. I came across the The Writer’s Diet test while reading about stylish academic writing in The Conversation.
I plugged in a couple of paragraphs from a manuscript I’m working on.
Turns out my writing is not in good shape.
Result: Flabby
The Writer’s Diet test assesses the proportion of words in your sample that fall into categories such as ‘nouns’, ‘prepositions’ and ‘verbs’, and then rates these against a scale that ranges from ‘lean’ to ‘heart attack’. Clearly, I am heavy-handed with the nouns.
It also provides you with a diagnosis that includes tips for trimming down your writing. For example, the test discourages overuse of nominalisations; long, important-sounding nouns formed from verbs or adjectives. Great advice! I normally hate nominalisations. But I study detectability.
The Writer’s Diet is not a one-size-fits-all test; nor is it designed to be. But it is a nice way to learn more about your writing and where you can afford to slim it down a bit. Removing unnecessary prepositions and other ‘waste’ words is a great way to make your writing more direct, concise and accessible.
So I’m sending my verbs and adverbs to the gym.
*As an aside, I ran the above post through the test. Result? Needs toning. I guess I’m improving.
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