Years ago, I was working at my college's Office of Information and Publications, and a professor had sent in a press release on a seminar about tight writing.
My boss asked me to take the release and cut it down; she wanted tight writing.
So I spent about a half hour cutting words and, occasionally, full sentences. I wound up turning a two-and-a-half page press release into about a page and a half, double spaced.
I heard that the professor was outraged that we'd trim his peerless prose, and he really would have been incensed if he'd learned that a STUDENT had done it. But he never said a word to me.
That editing work was a good lesson in tightening my own writing. And, yes, I sometimes find myself falling into the too-many-words trap.
But I usually remember to cut the fat out of my writing.
