Editing Principle 16: -ings Make Readers Itch

In his valuable Writing Tools, Roy Peter Clark offers a succinct diagnosis of many an unpersuasive paragraph: “Too many -ings.”

Contemporary written English is riddled with -ings. We love gerunds (verbs transformed into a noun with the addition of -ing, as in learning, judging, swimming, eating), for one.

We also imagine “He was running” sounds more artful than “He ran.”

But with rare exception, it doesn’t. Too many ‘ings packs on unnecessary syllables. And as Clark points out, verbs ending with “ing” begin to look alike. Compare the four above to learned, judged, swam, ate.

If you have an -ing problem, it may be due to an excess of sentences that start with dependent clauses, like so:

Gathering all her strength, Princess Valiant ran for cover.

Start the sentence with the subject instead, and you lose an -ing plus gain momentum:

Princess Valiant gathered her strength and ran for cover.