Cut to the chase.
The best writing goes straight there, to the meaning.
Skip extra words if you can.
“It could have lengthened out the legal fight.”
Perhaps the writer was being paid by the word. In which case, he or she would get one extra word’s worth of pay for “out.”
But it would have been perfectly fine for the writer to write:
“It could have lengthened the legal fight.”
I’ll just stop here. I won’t CONTINUE ON.
English Is A Complicated Language 