How to improve writing (no. 110)

It never fails: or, rather, it always fails. I look at Talking Points Memo and I end up tinkering with one or more sentences from Josh Marshall. I stopped at five:

The fact that one or more of the Supreme Court Justices appear to be venally corrupt in a rather fulsome fashion is a new addition to the story of the early 21st century. But the heart of it remains this: The current corrupt majority wants to wholly remake American law with little attention to precedent or any coherent jurisprudence or theory of interpreting the constitution. They’ve got the power and they’re going to use it. If you don’t like it, too bad. Yet they also want the deference and respect accorded to thoroughly apolitical players guided by restraint and an approach to the work that is more than dressing up their own policy aims with whatever theory serves the needs of the moment.

What I notice:

~ Empty prose additives: “the fact that,” “in a rather fulsome fashion,” “new addition,” “wholly remake,” “deference and respect,” “thoroughly.”

~ Vagueness: “the heart of it remains this,” “apolitical players.” I must have written “Avoid this alone” several thousand times in the margins of students’ essays. I have no idea who the players might be. Persons? Institutions? At any rate, players suggests the opposite of those who are apolitical.

~ An abundance of prepositional phrases: “in a rather fulsome fashion,” “to the story,” “of the early 21st century,” and so on. Chains of prepositional phrases are often a sign of slack writing. (See Richard Lanham’s paramedic method.)

~ Awkwardness: “an approach to the work that is more than dressing up their own policy aims with whatever theory serves the needs of the moment.”

~ Illogic: It makes no sense to speak of corruption of one or more jusitices followed by a claim that a majority of justices are corrupt.

A possible revision:

A corrupt Supreme Court is something new in twenty-first-century America. Yet even as the Court remakes American law with little regard for precedent, jurisprudence, or the Constitution, it insists on being accorded the deference shown to institutions guided by restraint and objectivity.

From 123 words to 44. Is anything missing? Well, yes: an indication of what the institutions guided by restraint and objectivity might be. So perhaps:

A corrupt Supreme Court is something new in twenty-first-century America. Yet even as the Court remakes American law with little regard for precedent, jurisprudence, or the Constitution, it insists on being treated with respect.

From 44 words to 36.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 110 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. “Empty prose additives” is a lovely phrase I’ve borrowed from Claire Cook’s Line by Line: How to Improve Your Own Writing.]