For many people, a key obstacle to communicating better is the tendency to be verbose. We use several words when we need only one meaningful word. We end up sounding overly long-winded (a self-defining example). Long-winded, a word that has teeth, is memorably self-descriptive. It means verbose or overly wordy in getting to the point. Overly long-winded therefore means overly, overly wordy. Why take the emphasis off a great word like long-winded by adding a redundant word like overly?

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For most people, the key obstacle to communicating better is the tendency to be verbose. We use several words when we need only one meaningful word. We end up sounding overly long-winded (a self-defining example). Long-winded, a word that has teeth, is memorably self-descriptive. It means verbose or overly wordy in getting to the point. Overly long-winded therefore means overly, overly wordy. Why take the emphasis off a great word like long-winded by adding a redundant word like overly?

(more…)