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Adjective Overdoses

By

Isaac Fitzgerald

•

“For some people, being able to use all these words is rather like being faced with a chocolate box with multiple layers; the temptation to overindulge is just too great.”

Alexander McCall Smith makes the case for conciseness.

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Isaac Fitzgerald
Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses Twitter.

One response

  1. John Brown Avatar
    John Brown

    The sentence you quoted is good, and a reminders are useful, but isn’t he just repeating the common wisdom of every freshman writing course? I feel like I’ve read this piece a dozen times. I even scrapped an eerily similar draft for a column, because I thought it was cliché. He could have saved the trouble and just written: “Be concise.”

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