"In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style"
About this Quote
Take a hacksaw to your own sentences and you will suddenly sound like you meant them. Sydney Smith’s advice is brutish on purpose: “run your pen through every other word” isn’t a literal editing technique so much as a moral correction for writers who confuse abundance with authority. Coming from a clergyman famed for social satire and public prose, the line doubles as a sermon against vanity. The hidden target isn’t just verbosity; it’s self-importance masquerading as eloquence.
The genius is the violence of the image. Smith doesn’t recommend “tightening” or “revising” - he recommends crossing out, the act that bruises the ego. That sting is the point. It forces a writer to confront how many words are padding, throat-clearing, or decorative hedges meant to protect the author rather than serve the reader. “You have no idea” twists the knife: you are not merely wordy, you are ignorant of how much strength you’re withholding by refusing to cut.
Context matters. Smith lived in a print culture where sermons, pamphlets, and parliamentary speech competed for attention, and where “fine writing” could drift into pomp. His rule is a democratizing move: vigor over varnish, clarity over clerical fog. There’s also a sly Protestant ethic to it - discipline, restraint, distrust of ornament - applied to style. Underneath the joke sits a serious claim: good prose is less about what you can add than what you can bear to remove.
The genius is the violence of the image. Smith doesn’t recommend “tightening” or “revising” - he recommends crossing out, the act that bruises the ego. That sting is the point. It forces a writer to confront how many words are padding, throat-clearing, or decorative hedges meant to protect the author rather than serve the reader. “You have no idea” twists the knife: you are not merely wordy, you are ignorant of how much strength you’re withholding by refusing to cut.
Context matters. Smith lived in a print culture where sermons, pamphlets, and parliamentary speech competed for attention, and where “fine writing” could drift into pomp. His rule is a democratizing move: vigor over varnish, clarity over clerical fog. There’s also a sly Protestant ethic to it - discipline, restraint, distrust of ornament - applied to style. Underneath the joke sits a serious claim: good prose is less about what you can add than what you can bear to remove.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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