I don't think it's 100% incorrect, like for a writing beginner it's pretty common to put more words down than you really want or need while you're thinking out loud onto the page But the idea that Hemingway was an ultimate writer and all writers should be more like him is BS
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This goes beyond just professional writing advice to a cultural thing The thing people say where "filler words" used to "soften" the impact of a sentence are a "bad habit" to be purged -- and one associated with femininity and ugly stereotypes of Valley girls etc.
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The assertion that "masculine" speech where the idea is just thrust at you, naked and unadorned, for the hearer to take it or leave it as they will, is *better* speech is left undefended And I don't think it's true
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The um's and like's and I mean's and if that makes sense's serve a function, that's why they're there in the first place Cocooning naked ideas in extra words to soften their impact is part of the point of language, and women especially learn it because it's necessary
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Unless you’re writing for television.
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Probably makes a lot of sense from the point of view of an editor who’s paying by the word. Even more if it’s news copy being sent by telegraph.
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having taught writing, i think many people to some degree model their writing on their speech, and this often imports unnecessary filler words and grammatical convolutions
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teaching people to write cleanly and say what they mean clearly often involves a lot of pruning
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Yeah, the notion that a perfect sentence is replete such that removing/adding another word makes it somehow less perfect is just dumb. Editing is a critical ability but fetishizing brevity is strange.
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This opinion comes as no surprise, Mr. I-only-tweet-threads
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