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EXERCISE - Wordiness III
1. Study the following paragraph, decide which ideas are important,
and strike out the details that merely clog the thought:
As I stepped into the room, I heard the clock ticking and that caused me
to look at it. It sits on the mantelpiece with some layers of paper under
one corner where the mantel is warped. When the papers slip out or we move
the clock a little as we're dusting, the ticking stops right away. Of
course the clock's not a new one at all, but it's an old one. It has been
in the family for many a long year, yes, from even before my father's
time. Let me see, it was bought by my grandfather. No, it couldn't have
been grandfather that bought it; it was his brother. Oh, yes, I remember
now; my mother told me all about it, and I'd forgotten what she said till
this minute. But really my grandfather's brother didn't exactly buy it. He
just traded for it. He gave two pigs and a saddle, that's what my mother
said. You see, he was afraid his hogs might take cholera and so he wanted
to get rid of them; and as for the saddle, he had sold his riding-horse
and he didn't have any more use for that. Well, it isn't a valuable clock,
like a grandfather clock or anything of that sort, though it is antique.
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