A short rant about “That is” and “In other words”
I see That is and In other words in quite a bit of what I read. Articles, essays, books, documentation. When I see them, I shake my head and think one of the following:
- The writer is being paid by the word.
- The editor (if there was one) wasn’t paying attention.
- The writer didn’t do his/her job properly in the first place.
Usually, it’s number three. Why do I think that the writer didn’t do his/her job properly? Because when you use That is or In other words you’re essentially explaining or stating something twice, or trying to clarify what’s in the previous sentence. It’s an unnecessary waste of words, and a waste or the reader’s time.
If a writer is doing his/her job properly, that bit of clarification via repetition isn’t needed. Once is enough.
I’ll go back to an example that I frequently use. It’s from a manual that I rewrote for a telecommunications application a few years ago:
You can search your folders for all media of a specific type. That is, you can search the folders for all images, audio files, video clips, or documents.
I rewrote it as You can search your folders for images, audio files, video clips, or documents. That little re-write effectively trimmed the passage in half and still kept its meaning.
If you feel the need to do something like this, then try merging the two sentences or getting rid of one of them. On the other hand, if the sentence elaborates on the previous one, then just remove the That is or the In other words.
