There are, indeed, repetition and literally unnecessary words. Who needs to hear, for example, "Dim, Dim being really dim," in terms of pure factual information? It could all be inferred from the first word alone. But it is not empty verbiage: besides the beauty of the sounds, here, to use a phrase coined by another fine Catholic writer, the medium is the message: repetition of the obvious expresses aptly the essential meaning of the subject, "dim." Shakespeare, also commonly considered culturally Catholic, does something similar when his Hamlet speaks of a "windy suspiration of forc'd breath"--in other words, a breathy breath of breathing.

Long-winded? That's the point.

So the plain language practitioner must not confuse plainness with stripping out aesthetic values, especially when moving outside of the White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant milieu. No; the rule here, to be clear, should be, not, "omit needless words," but "omit words not serving at least one purpose." True conciseness requires this as a minimum; merely transmitting factual information is, to a good writer, not enough.

And, once again, most other cultures seem to value the beauty of language more highly than the Anglo-Saxon. Arabic culture, for example; the Korean classic Chunhyang is notably flowery in translation, to a Canadian ear.

Sound Qualities

Some very good writers, in my experience, object to being edited. When they do, the problem is almost always the same: fear of sound qualities being damaged. When you omit needless words, you should remember that words otherwise needless may be there to preserve a certain rhythm of speech.

South Asians, for example, speak English very quickly. They are able to do this, and to understand, because their English is heavily rhythmic, and because they favour complex stress patterns: dactyls and anapests.

I choose a business communication almost at random to illustrate.

Note the stresses in this first sentence of the second paragraph: where would you put them?

I have eight years of experience in administration, two years in software development, and eight months in technical recruiting. As Marketing Manager I have successfully placed consultants...

This is a random sample from a non-professional writer. But it is distinctly anapestic.