Clutter By William Zinsser Summary

Humans have a reputation for wasting things: time, money, resources, and even words. When wasted words begin to distract from writing, it is called clutter. In “Clutter”, William Zinsser utilizes figurative language, ethical appeals, and arrangement to reveal the creep of cluttered language into writing and to persuade writers to avoid it. Zinsser’s use of figurative language introduces the topic while revealing that clutter does more harm than good. He begins the essay by comparing clutter to parasitic plants, saying, “Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds- the writer is always slightly behind” (155). With the comparison, he draws the audience, students of all ages that write formally, into the essay and makes the connection that cluttered

Zinsser points out that “Clutter is the language of the Pentagon calling an invasion a ‘reinforced protective reaction strike’” (157). This shows how crafty wording can hide the truth and deceive readers. It displays the manipulation that governments can perform with a little change of phrasing, questioning the ethics of lying to the public. This leads the audience to consider how they have been deceived and show them why clutter is bad from the reader’s standpoint. Another example comes when Zinsser writes, “His message was ‘leave it to Al’ though what he actually said was, ‘We must push this to a lower decibel of public fixation.’”(157). This shows how selective wording can have an impact on public perception and how the government uses this fact to keep people in ignorance. Writers then see how they are being kept in the dark because they have fallen into the trap of permitting clutter to continue. Because their use of clutter justifies the government’s and they can see how it is used negatively, they resolve to stop using flowery, unnecessary language. They realize how serious clutter can be as a weapon and cut their own writing down for clarity and concision to take this weapon away. These real-life examples of ethically debatable clutter continue to reveal the damage of cluttered language and show students why it must be stopped, pushing them to avoid it in their