Writing Clearly, Part Three

Writing clearly comes as much from understanding principles as from applying rules. Principles call us to work towards goals, and sometimes those goals are ideals. Rules give us limits, boundaries, and require us to stay within the lines drawn by the boundaries we define. Rules help us in some aspects of writing--rules of grammar, for instance, but in other aspects of writing, we have to rely on principles rather than rules.

One principle of writing clearly says that to understand the message of a piece of writing, we need to know who the characters are in that piece. This is as much as saying that whenever we write anything, whether we think of it as fiction or fact, we're telling a story. The clearest stories we tell tend to have the main characters serve as the subjects of our sentences. Here are a few examples:


There is no need, then, for argument aout the existence, the inevitability, and the desirability of change in language. There is need, however, for argument about the existence of such a thing as good English and correct English.

--Theodore Bernstein, The Careful Writer, quoted in Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Having quoted Bernstein, Williams revises the passage like this:

While we need not debate whether language changes in ways that are inevitable and desirable, we do argue that there is such a thing as good and correct English.

Williams's version makes it clear who the characters of the "story" are here, and that is an important reason why most people will find the second version clearer than the first. Here's the third principle of clear writing: when you write, understand who the characters of your "story" are, and try to place the main characters as the subjects of your sentences.

A Resource for Learning About Grants and Grant Writing

One important type of proposal is a grant application. In a grant application, a writer offers a proposal to a foundation that awards money for a specific purpose. These foundations are set up as non-profit organizations intended to help people achieve the goals that are important to them--completing a program of study at a university, investigating a problem of some kind such as an epidemic, or in some cases, exploring a creative avenue to invent something completely new.

To help the many non-profit organizations make it easier for people to submit proposals for these grants, an umbrella organization has been set up to help people identify which grants might best help them reach their goals. This umbrella organization is called the Foundation Center. With offices in only a very small number of cities throughout the country, the Foundation Center is an invaluable resource for learning about sources for getting all kinds of grants. The Center also offers a wide array of services for people interested in learning about grant writing. Because the Foundation Center has an office in downtown Atlanta, we as residents are unusually well-situated to make use of its many resources to learn how to write effective proposals that lead to the award of non-profit grants. Go here to visit the Foundation Center's Atlanta website.

Writing Clearly, Part Two

One important part of writing clearly is learning to edit unnecessary words from your prose. Often we repeat ourselves in writing because we're trying to write the way we talk--something English teachers frequently suggest we do to become more "authentic" writers. When we're speaking, however, we need to repeat ourselves a good bit more than we do when we're writing, because people often aren't very attentive when they hear something; in general, they're more likely to get the essence of something they read with minimum repetition.

Some studies of audience behavior, for example, have suggested that in lecture situations, at any given time about thirty percent of the audience is paying attention. If that's true, a listening audience actually needs a good bit of repetition from a speaker to stay on track with the topic at hand. By contrast, a reading audience tends to comprehend a good bit more of what's written, so too much repetition in written matter can actually hurt a reader: it can make a reader lose focus, skim over areas of text, or lose interest. Go here for a lesson on learning how to weed out excessive repetition from your writing.

Writing Clearly, Part One

English is rich in the options it gives us for expressing ourselves. In the course of its development, English has been influenced by three major languages: German, French, and Latin. As a descendant of the group of languages commonly referred to as "Germanic and Slavic," English shares much of its vocabulary with German; it also shares a good deal of its structure (syntax and grammar) with German. For example, in English we say, "He is my father," and in German one would say the same thing by saying, "Er ist mein Vater."

French came along to influence English when the Normans conquered England in 1066. For several hundreds of years after the Norman conquest, French was actually the official court language of the English. The influence of French upon English persists to this day at many levels, and can be most easily seen in the English words for military matters (e.g., redan, reconnaisance, reconnoitre, fusillade, etc.) and legal matters (e.g., voir dire, oyez et terminez, bailiff and plaintiff).

Beyond that, Latin vocabulary became infused into English through the Catholic Church's teachings, which came first in the form of liturgical lessons, and later expanded greatly when the Church started to build the first universities in Europe, all of which taught exclusively in Latin for hundreds of years. The result of all these influences has been that English has become a particularly "mixed-up" language, rich in vocabularly, in modes of expression and in options for self-expression.

One effect of the massive invasion of English by other languages has been that English has come to give speakers a number of choices as to how to express actions and descriptive characteristics. For example, if I want to describe various actions, I can do so this way:

He decided to buy that house.
He made a decision to buy that house.

Decide -- decision
Arrange - arrangment
Converse -- conversation
Encourage -- encouragement

In other words, it's possible to turn a verb into a noun just by changing the form of a word using some of the options our invader languages have given us.

She arranged to meet us at the office.
She made an arrangement for an office meeting.
An arrangement was made by her regarding the meeting.
An arrangement regarding the meeting was made.

When we turn an action word or a descriptive word into a noun, the resulting word is called a "nominalization."

Here are some more examples of nominalizations and their "parent" words:

analyze/analysis
precise/precision
clear/clarity
conclude/conclusion
accurate/accuracy
wreck/wreck
suspicious/suspicion
greet/greeting
relate/relation

Why should we think about nominalizations as part of thinking about clear writing? We should think about them because using nominalizations TOO MUCH in our writing may make it harder to understand what we say. Most readers will find the following sentence confusing:

The decision on the part of the committee regarding the construction of the new facility was made at the meeting.

Most readers will find the following version clearer:

The committee decided to build the new facility.

Actually, what makes the second version clearer than the first involves several principles of writing clearly:

1. Version 2 is more succinct than version 1--it says all it needs to say using the fewest words.

2. Version 2 gets rid of all the nominalizations it can--in fact, ALL of the nominalizations in the first version--and replaces them with words that convey more action more directly.

3. Version 2 makes it clear who's acting and upon what, by naming the "agent" of the action clearly and simply. Version 2 also locates the agent's name as close as possible to the beginning of the sentence.

The point is this: nominalizations aren't bad in and of themselves, but if you want to write clearly, avoid overusing them. People often use nominalizations when they want to sound "official" or "professional." This is because using the nominalized style of expression came to us by way of French and Latin, and so it has become historically linked with giving the appearance of being educated and aristocratic.

The problem with using nominalizations excessively is that they force you to build sentences that are wordier and more (needlessly) complex than their more active counterparts. Sentences with lots of nominalizations in them tend to be more complex than sentences with fewer such words, and sometimes the complexity you get from a heavily nominalized style makes it harder for your readers to get the real message you're trying to convey. Nominalizations aren't bad words; they just need to be used sparingly. Use them when it really isn't important to know who is the agent of an action. When it's important to be clear about who is acting and upon what, revise your prose to have fewer nominalizations.

Here, then, is one principle of clear writing: seek to express yourself as directly as you can, and to make sure your audience understands who's doing what in the sentences you craft. Avoid the nominalized style of writing when, as you edit, you find a leaner, more active style of writing serves your purpose better.

Look at these nominalizations and think about how you can turn them into other words:

analysis
belief
attempt
conclusion
emphasis
evaluation
suggestion
approach
comparison
definition
failure
acquisition
appeal
appearance
description
decrease
improvement
importance
relevance

Remember this: principles of writing clearly aren't based on rigidly defined rules: always do this, never do this. Principles of good writing are like road signs: they work best when they give you room to navigate. To write clearly, you have to learn to judge what works best, and often that means working with a good deal of uncertainty--learning how to avoid it and how, on occasion, to use it.


from Joseph Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 4th Ed., New York: HarperCollins, 1994.