Larry: I think you ought to rewrite some of your cover letters in this style. I found it irresistible.

Otherwise, I think you have me confused with someone else: I never doubted expressed doubt about the value of more research.

So, I do want to express how sorry I am feeling now that I have reason to believe that it might be the case that the comment that I made earlier today was not sufficiently of a sensitive nature, in light of the fact that you yourself may have possibly made use of the very styles of expression, or perhaps something that amounts to variations on such styles of expression, that the foregoing comment has emphatically emphasized should not ever be used anymore under circumstances of any nature.

I do not here mean to go so far as to say that you should not necessarily be experiencing the feeling of embarrassment about the facts that you have set forth in your comment above. Indeed, I only want at the present time to indicate my appreciation and understanding of the extent to which it is conceivable that I could be in the wrong as to the matter. This is precisely because it is certainly open to conjecture that disagreement about these various issues could potentially exist among a large number of those people whose job it is to write things for other people to read.

You give a pretty good and arguably compelling illustrative example when you bring into the discussion the very interesting notion of whether or not “that is” is as bad, or not as bad, as “that is to say.” In the interest of generating continuing discussion on the point, I would just add, for whatever it may be worth to other people, that there could be some other unspecified relationship altogether between “that is” and “that is to say” that has not been looked into, investigated, examined or considered, even by way of implication, in previous written materials on the subject (or any other). But this is not the place or time to delve deeply into the difficult complexities and higher abstractions that a serious study would necessarily require in order to provide a fully comprehensive treatment of the subject.

A.Dork: Have you considered writing a needless article full of filthy words? Probably more fun, though perhaps less useful at tenure, if you are of that ilk.

Your sabbatical is off to a great start!

Additional candidates that law professors not only commonly write but also commonly speak, that should be stricken on style grounds, are “the ways in which” and “that is to say” [or "which is to say"].

The former often means “how” and that single word should be used; the “in which” is never necessary. The latter signals poor thought when uttered and need for rewriting when written.

Those points make it astonishing how often all three are used. In JLR, “the ways in which” and “that is to say” both hit the 10,000 results ceiling; “which is to say” yields 3,735.

(I’m enjoying this way too much, when I really should be using this time to generate an article chock full of needless words….)

Dork: I hear you, though my title had the virtue of reminding readers that editing is an active process: including needless words is a failure. Your version is shorter, but omits the moral judgment.

On a somewhat unrelated point, it occurs to me, looking at the picture of E.B. White in my post, that he looks a little bit like actor Patrick Stewart. Coincidence?

A.J.: the clean example is “owing to the fact that” –> since or because. In your sentence, I’d edit to: “Fewer words do not guarantee a better sentence” is, at eight words, superior than the 14-16 they replace. At least in my view. And I think there’s still fat to cull there — “do not guarantee” has flab.

Only among law profs would the prospect of two more published law review articles be considered a winning sales pitch.