Blog Post 2: “Fuzz” in Writing

Within a session with Greg yesterday (18/09/17), we discussed the issue of “fuzz” within writing particularly in news articles. We were given a ‘news story’ which we had to rewrite by eliminating all of the unnecessary information, and simplifying the article as a whole. We also had to identify any questions that arose throughout the writing that were not answered immediately in the article. This is my simplified version of the article:

Joe and Kate Foster were involved in a collision with a HGV, that mounted the pavement on Wesley Street.

It was later revealed that the HGV was transporting motor parts to Oxford, when the driver had to veer away from a police car that was speeding towards him on the wrong side of the road. Joe and Kate were taken to a local hospital’s A&E Unit in a shocked but unscathed condition. They have been seen as ‘very lucky’ not to have been ‘seriously injured’ in the incident. After a brief examination at the hospital, they were allowed to return home.

After reading the original article the questions I found that were left unanswered were:
What time of day did the incident occur?

What did the Police spokesperson say?

After this exercise, we had to eliminate “fuzz” from a short passage explaining what “fuzz” is. We placed brackets around said “fuzz” and then proceeded to rewrite the passage. This is my improved, concise version of the passage:

All writers edit their prose, but great writers edit viciously, trying to eliminate “fuzz”- excess words which are not adding value. Zinsser compares the process to fighting weeds- you will always be slightly behind. If you replace all instances of words such as ‘also’ and ‘very’, your writing will improve.

After eliminating the “fuzz” from both passages, I found that in order to write well, you don’t always have to write mass amounts, as this can lead to a variety of unwanted words that have zero relevance within your work.