One phrase to kill from your writing, immediately
William Strunk said it made him “quiver with revulsion.” Are you using it?
The phrase is “the fact that.”
In The Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White devote a paragraph to the term that made Strunk “quiver with revulsion.” They insist “the fact that” should be revised in every instance.
The writer Bill Bryson is more forgiving.
In his book, Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words, he says that Strunk and White might be putting it a “trifle strongly,” but he still urges writers to omit the phrase.
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