Omit needless words

The book's most famous rule is also its organizing philosophy: every word that doesn't add meaning subtracts from the sentence, because it makes the reader work harder to find the actual point. Strunk's instruction isn't to write short sentences on principle, but to make every sentence exactly as long as its content requires — no shorter, no longer.

He illustrates this with classic before-and-after pairs: "the question as to whether" becomes "whether"; "he is a man who is" becomes simply naming what the man is. Each cut sentence loses nothing but padding, and gains directness in return.

The rule is deceptively simple to state and hard to practice, because writers often mistake extra words for thoroughness or formality. Strunk's counter-claim is that vigor comes from compression, not accumulation — a lean sentence hits harder than a padded one saying the same thing. Every word should earn its place, or it should go.