How many words are too many words? It’s a question writers must often ask themselves, for a tendency to pile on just one more telling adjective is often hard to resist. Today’s meditation goes in the other direction. How may words are too few?

It’s a question writers ought to ask themselves more often. Often just an extra word or two will make the difference between prose that glides and prose that stumbles. Examples:

From an editorial in The New York Times last year on a bill affecting immigration: “Meanwhile, nervous and defensive Democrats wrapped the bill tightly in a procedural blanket.” Careful editing would have trimmed away either “nervous” or “defensive,” but more to the point: A sensitive ear would have added an “of.” Instead of wrapping their bill “in a procedural blanket,” which reads like a half-hearted gargle, those Democrats would have wrapped their bill in “a blanket of procedure.”

The meaning has not been altered, but the sentence now falls trippingly from the tongue. Three little iambs have found their way. The bill has been wrapped in a BLANK-et OF pro-CED-ure. It snuggles upon the ear.

Consider another editorial in the good gray Times, this one from eight weeks ago: “The firing offenses of the nine prosecutors were ... that they would not try to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups with baseless election fraud cases.” Clumsy! But look what an unobtrusive “of” can do for that sentence. We recast it to read, “... with baseless cases of election fraud.” Now we end not with the whimper of “cases” but with the solid bang of “fraud.“

Once more, from the Times in June. The editorial writer’s purpose was to chide the president for a regrettable appointment. Two years ago, said the Times, Mr. Bush had pushed the World Bank, his administration and the whole world into “the unnecessary and embarrassing Paul Wolfowitz ordeal.”

Aaaargh! There’s no rule against dragooning proper nouns into service as adjectives, but this sentence falls of its own weight. The ordeal is 1,unnecessary, 2, embarrassing and, 3, Paul Wolfowitz. Suppose the sentence were emended to refer to “the unnecessary and embarrassing ordeal of Paul Wolfowitz”?

Yet one more: This gumminess appeared in a movie review in the Times last month: “Emma Watson’s Hermione ... is one of the few role models for girls (and women) in the boy-dominated fantasy movie genre.” The sentence is beyond repair.

The Washington Post often contributes to the adjectival goo: “President Bush nominated Deputy Treasury Secretary Samuel W. Bodman yesterday as his second secretary of energy, tapping an administration veteran to lead the Energy Department at a time of unstable oil prices and rising nuclear proliferation concerns.” The sentence falls not trippingly. How about, “unstable oil prices and rising concerns over nuclear proliferation”?

The New Republic contributed in April to a semantic pile-up: “The fact that Bush has inflicted massive damage on the American system without apparently breaking many laws should earn Bush many style points.” Would it have been crisper to emend the sentence to read, “many points for style”?

As I said, there is no “rule” against drafting nouns to serve as adjectives. It happens all the time, and at the hands of some very good editors. All the same, when an impulse arises to pile on more than two modifiers, the best advice is likely to be: Lie down until the impulse goes away.

Questions can be sent to James J. Kilpatrick at kilpatjj@aol.com.