OK, not everyone gets emotional satisfaction from being able to see the top of the desk or having fewer tchotchkes to dust.

But whether you’re a neatnik or not, getting rid of clutter makes you more efficient and effective. You can find what you’re actually looking for without having to move a few hundred other things to get at it.

(Plus you don’t have to spend as much time dusting, which, as an efficiency tactic, ranks high in my book.)

Similarly, getting rid of the clutter in your communications makes your writing more efficient and effective. Readers should not have to sift through a lot of superfluous paragraphs, sentences, or even words in order to get at what you’re trying to say.

I’ll go farther: Not only should readers not have to work their way through your clutter, they just won’t. They will not wade through your junk to get to your jewels.

Uncluttered prose is a lean, mean communicating machine. It gets your point across without wasting the reader’s time or patience. Uncluttered prose is the essence of clear, effective communication.

Much of what I do when I edit other people’s writing or revise my own is to eliminate clutter. I recently brought 36-page reports down to 32, with additional graphs. (A picture is worth how many words?) A three-page letter becomes two, a four-paragraph web page becomes one paragraph with a bulleted list. Guess which version gets read to the end?

Decades of experience have taught me where to save words without sacrificing meaning. Since there are hundreds of ways to talk about lean prose – and hundreds of books and websites to match – I’ve pulled out five red flags that make me look closely at a sentence to see how to say it more simply.

1. It is / was / will be. Watch especially for “It is important to note that,” “It is clear that,” and the like. If it’s so important and clear, why not just say it?

It is important to note that parents’ reports of what they intend to do may show significant differences from what they actually do.

Parents don’t always do what they say they are going to do.

2. There is / are / was / were. Unless “there” means “in that place,” the word is probably sapping the strength of your prose. Starting with “there” usually leaves you with a linking verb, some version of “be,” when you could use an action verb that actually says something.

There were multiple reasons for the policy change, including …

Reasons for the policy change included….

(By the way, you don’t want a colon after “included.”)

3. The nounification of verbs. Verbs are strong. Turning verbs into nouns not only adds syllables but also substitutes a weak “be” verb for a real verb.

This process assists in the identification of ….

This process helps to identify …

4. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, or phrases in series. Wouldn’t “words in series” have done just as well there? Sometimes you really need every element in a series, but often some elements are implied by others.

…employees with diverse cultural, religious, and linguistic identities

…employees with diverse cultural identities

Religion and language are part of culture. One word covers all three.

5. Polysyllabic expressions. That is, long words and phrases. If there’s a shorter version, use it.

• Multiple becomes many.
• Assists becomes helps.
• Utilize becomes use. Better yet, utilization also becomes use!
• Due to the fact that becomes because.

And so on. The federal government (who knew?) has a pretty good list at plainlanguage.gov.

I probably have another 30 things that I look for, but I do it almost instinctively by now. You can go a good way toward de-cluttering your prose with these five tips.

If you get stuck, just turn your piece over to me. I’ll make it a lean, mean communicating machine.