Two classes of the opening It indicate fat. The first
is It is..., It was..., or It will be...,
followed by the subject, followed by who, that,
or which. The construction sometimes is justifiable
for emphasis, but it generally is unacceptable because
it gives the prominent lead position in the sentence to
a pronoun not yet defined, a position that the subject
deserves. And it takes three additional words.
It is Richard who damaged...
CHANGE TO
Richard damaged...
It was Wang Laboratories that engineered...
CHANGE TO
Wang Laboratories engineered...
The second class is a series of circumlocutions—of
uses of many words where fewer will do—that begin
with the indefinite pronoun It.
It appears that Cuba will...
CHANGE TO
Cuba will...
It goes without saying that I...
CHANGE TO
I...
It should be noted that I...
CHANGE TO
I...
Almost any sentence will be improved by trimming
such fatty constructions.
