y by careful
revision of their own compositions, and by careful dissection of
passages selected both from good and bad writers. They have simply to
strike out every word, every clause, and every sentence, the removal of
which will not carry away any of the constituent elements of the
thought. Having done this, let them compare the revised with the
unrevised passages, and see where the excision has improved, and where
it has injured, the effect. For Economy, although a primal law, is not
the only law of Style. It is subject to various limitations from the
pressure of other laws; and thus the removal of a trifling superfluity
will not be justified by a wise economy if that loss entails a
dissonance, or prevents a climax, or robs the expression of its ease
and variety. Economy is rejection of whatever is superfluous; it is not
Miserliness. A liberal expenditure is often the best economy, and is
always so when dictated by a generous impulse, not by a prodigal
carelessness or ostentatious vanity. That man would greatly err who
tried to make his style effective by stripping it of all redundancy and
ornament, presenting it naked before the indifferent public. Perhaps
the very redundancy which he lops away might have aided the reader to
see the thought more clearly, because it would have kept the thought a
little longer before his mind, and thus prevented him from hurrying on
to the next while this one was still imperfectly conceived.

As a general rule, redundancy is injurious; and the reason of the rule
will enable us to discriminate when redundancy is injurious and when
beneficial. It is injurious when it hampers the rapid movement of the
reader's mind, diverting his attention to some collateral detail. But
it is beneficial when its retarding influence is such as only to detain
the mind longer on the thought, and thus to secure the fuller effect of
the thought. For rapid reading is often imperfect reading. The mind is
satisfied with a glimpse of that which it ought to have steadily
contemplated; and any artifice by which the thought can be kept long
enough before the mind, may indeed be a redundancy as regards the
meaning, but is an economy of power. Thus we see that the phrase or the
clause which we might be tempted to lop away because it threw no light
upon the proposition, would be retained by a skilful writer because it
added power. You may know the character of a redundancy by this one
test: does it divert the attention