Wikipedia talk:Avoid trite expressions

Questions and more questions
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.215.169.199 (talk • contribs).
 * Is this a call to dumb down, many of the articles? (such a cultural decline we are living right now!, even though literacy levels are the highest than in any other time in history)
 * Is this a call to make shorter articles, to destilate them into what could be considered pure knoledge?
 * To make them less confusing, perhaps?
 * To make them prettier? (in the sense that they should be written like a grammar teacher would)
 * This is/was a call for concision.
 * Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.— Willian J. Strunk, The Elements of Style
 * Circeus 18:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Misleading
Whoah... they really got my number with "due to the fact that". :'-(

I often feel my writing is verbose, but can't always figure out why.... "Due to the fact that" was one of the few blighters I managed to pin down. Still hasn't stopped me saying it yet :-/

That aside, I'm not convinced that "At the present time" is a good example of a non-concise expression. The problem is that "the present time" (of writing) becomes the past if not kept up-to-date, giving a false impression. But IMHO that's not a verbosity issue. Fourohfour 20:05, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
 * "At the present time" could still be "currently," and still be problematic because of timing. Circeus 18:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)