My editor is killing me

[Srinivasayyar]

Hello,
I have had a string of 20 rejections over the past week. Most of these rejections are for reasons of "wordiness". I have had 50 articles accepted over the past two months and there was no complaint of wordiness. Now, there is. I responded to these rejections by reading the web pages on wordiness that I'd been given and others, to learn how to change my writing style and be less wordy. I feel that this style drains the life out of a piece, but I am willing to do it.

After learning all this, I went through the rejected articles and took the time to remove every instance of wordiness that I could find. I then resubmitted the articles.

They have been rejected again for wordiness this morning, with the warning to not resubmit. One article, called "Is a Career in Enterprise SEO a Good Move?" (see below )was rejected with this explanation – "There are/there is sentence construction is unnecessary and wordy. Sentences should never begin with there are/there is".

The article has two sentences of this kind at different places:

1. There are more problems
2. There is one good way to overcome these problems.

What do I do here? Am I required to say "More problems exist" instead of "There are more problems" to save on one word? "More problems exist" sounds terse while the other sounds friendly. Am I not allowed to exercise any freedom as a writer? More importantly, is this enough reason to reject an article over with a "Do not resubmit"?

The following sentences come from the New York Times:
1. There is no apparent source of that much money in the state's $31 billion annual budget.
2. There Is No Playbook for What the Chiefs Face

Should the New York Times be pulled up for bad, wordy and lazy English (Celeste Stewart, the moderator, calls "There are" sentences lazy in a post)? Is it wrong that we should strive to write to the NYT's level?

I've used the word "quite" once in this article (This should smooth the way quite well) and this has been criticized, too.

I am trying hard to learn to be less wordy, but these demands to squeeze every last word out seem very strange, arbitrary and poorly judged.

Try putting the word "quite" in the search box and hundreds of articles show up – by established writers like Celeste Stewart, Wordgypsy, Beconrad and Dr.E.C.Gordon.Why am I being picked on?

I understand that my editor happens to care about wordiness. But is it fair that he/she should be so intolerant? It isn’t grammatically wrong to be wordy, after all – it is only a style preference (the NYT uses it, after all). Why be fanatical about a style preference?

Should I be handed rejection after rejection for one or two words like these? I personally feel that sentences that are restructured to avoid a "There are" start are often very awkward and ugly. Do my preferences in writing style not matter at all?

My editor wants to take this "unwordy" style to extremes. When I try to cut out on my wordiness this much, it affects the flow of the article, too. And then the editor criticizes me for flow-related problems (in two other articles).

This would be okay if the editor would at least engage in dialogue of some kind to help me. Instead, it's just summary rejection with a "Do not resubmit". Such high-handedness.

I hope they will assign me another editor as I requested. I simply don't know how to write blandly like this. Things went so well the first 50 articles. How does it change anything to bring anything to this forum? I'm probably going to get suspended for my rejections before long.

Thanks, Srinivasan

Is a Career in Enterprise SEO a Good Move?
Life as an independent SEO consultant can be tough. You need to run after new clients, pander to their whims and worry about getting paid. SEO work at a large corporation, on the other hand, is dependable and cushy. Should you choose an enterprise SEO job over independent work then?
Inertia
Independent SEO professionals call their own shots. It is up to them what strategies to use on a project.
At a large corporation, a single blog post or a new content strategy for the company website could require multiple rounds of approval. There are more problems.
1. It can take time to find out where to turn for approval. It can cripple an SEO strategy to not be able to respond quickly to developments.
2. It can be challenging bringing many departments on board for an SEO strategy when many managers are ignorant of SEO.
3. It can be difficult for free-spirited SEO professionals to submit to the data-driven working style at these places.
4. Corporate data can be closely guarded and difficult to access.
5. Office politics can get in the way.
A lack of stability
The HR departments at large corporations deal with hundreds of employees. Just when you've managed to find and network with the right people, you could find them transferred.
The bright side to enterprise SEO
Enterprise SEO still can be an attractive career opportunity because it tends to be well-funded. You get a top-notch team of writers, graphic designers, layout managers and website designers to help put out great results.
There is one good way to overcome these problems. You need to plan to bring some basic SEO education to everyone in the enterprise. This should smooth the way quite well.
Summary
If you are an SEO professional and you're tired of working with small business owners, the idea of an enterprise SEO job could sound like just the thing. If you have something like this lined up, you should probably consider both sides of the story.

[Celeste Stewart]

There are many reasons why "there are" (and "there is") is singled out as lazy or simply picked on, but that doesn't mean "there are" (and "there is") should never be used, even by those who personally can't stand the phrase.

1. It's overused.
2. It's passive.
3. More active phrasing is often a better choice.

Strunk & White's The Elements of Style has this to say: Many a tame sentence can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some perfunctory expression such as there is or could be heard. (Example: There were a great number of leaves lying on the ground. | Dead leaves covered the ground.)

It's also wordy as the example above illustrates.

Here's another example using the opening sentence of this post:
There are many reasons why "there are/there is" is singled out as lazy or simply picked on, but that doesn't mean "there are/there is" should never be used, even by those who dislike the phrase.

Editors single out "there are/there is" as lazy (and worse); however, that doesn't mean the phrase should never be used, even by those who dislike the phrase.

If you want an article to be just a little bit better, search for "there are/there is" and see if you can find a better way to phrase it. You probably can. If you see another writer get away with it, the writer may have:

• Been lazy that time around
  Not noticed ("there are/there is" could be a bad habit)
  Decided the sentence was good enough
  Have carefully selected that phrase after much thought

If the phrase has been pointed out as overused in a particular submission or over a body of work, then it's time to re-think its use.

Same with "quite." Same with "very." Same with other fill-in-the-blank words, particularly adverbs and adjectives. Where one writer may overuse a word or phrase, or writers in general, another may use that same word just fine or even brilliantly. I wouldn't worry about which words fill the NY Times, just which ones fill your screen. Again, I go back to Strunk & White: Omit needless words. If you do this, you're halfway there