Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Needless words: The case for a bit of verbal padding. These rhetorical considerations apply to all language, not just polite discourse, which is why wordiness is so hard to define. You can find lists of phrases deemed wordy because they are sometimes superfluous - in order to, is able to, reach an agreement, make a decision, in terms of, there is, it is. But those phrases sometimes serve to give the sentence the proper rhythm or emphasis.