ClearTips: Edit yourself

The opening It

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.

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