Concise writing is usually clear writing (10) – Lewis Thomas, “Biology Watcher”

Here’s another great example of clear, concise writing. It’s from The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, by the physician and professor Lewis Thomas (1913-1993).*

The book is a collection of 29 essays. The author’s style is clear, remarkably concise, and surprisingly entertaining.

Here are the first two paragraphs of the first essay:

“We are told that the trouble with Modern Man is that he has been trying to detach himself from nature. He sits in the topmost tiers of polymer, glass, and steel, dangling his pulsing legs, surveying at a distance the writhing life of the planet. In this scenario, Man comes on as a stupendous lethal force, and the earth is pictured as something delicate, like rising bubbles at the surface of a country pond, or flights of fragile birds.

“But it is illusion to think that there is anything fragile about the life of the earth; surely this is the toughest membrane imaginable in the universe, opaque to probability, impermeable to death. We are the delicate part, transient and vulnerable as cilia. Nor is it a new thing for man to invent an existence that he imagines to be above the rest of life; this has been his most consistent intellectual exertion down the millennia. As illusion, it has never worked out to his satisfaction in the past, any more than it does today. Man is embedded in nature.”

The Takeaway: To improve the clarity of your writing, spend at least ten minutes a day reading aloud from writers who write clearly, such as Lewis Thomas. You will see, hear and feel the stark contrast between careful, grown-up diction and the careless, infantile diction that besets us every day. If you would like a list of recommended writers and works, please email me at the address shown in my profile. Ask for my “List of Writers to Absorb.” I will respond via email.

*Thanks to Robyn Elfie Olson for introducing me to the works of Dr. Thomas.

Fallacies (1) – sunk costs

The fallacy of sunk costs is one of dozens of common fallacies. A fallacy is any example of “[p]lausible but invalid reasoning.” Many fallacies have been known since ancient times.

The fallacy of sunk costs is the consideration of spent time or spent money as a factor in a decision.

For example, an investor holds 500 shares of a stock, and is trying to decide whether to sell the shares. The shares have lost 40 percent of their value since he bought them. He would like to sell in order to invest the proceeds elsewhere. He would also like to hold the 500 shares until he regains the value he has lost. So, he is torn.

But the amount he has lost in the past, however painful it may feel to him, is irrelevant. It should not be a factor in the present. He should consider only the likely future performance of the shares as compared to the likely future performance of the other investment he could make if he liquidates the shares.

For more detail on the fallacy of sunk costs, read this easy-to-follow article by business coach Paul Lemberg.

Here’s an excerpt:

Sunk costs are sunk.

They are gone.

They are spent.

The assets you’ve created may have some surplus value, like unused inventory. Or they may have salvage value [like gold in a shipwreck]… But in many cases the value of your sunk costs is a tiny fraction of the original price.

The Takeaway: Remember that clear writing presupposes clear thinking. Try to avoid fallacies such as the fallacy of sunk costs. Best wishes for the New Year.

Clarity is not an ornament

A great many people, when they write prose, think clarity is optional. They believe it is an ornament, and that the essence of writing is “just get it down on paper.”

Frank Rich (pictured), one of the few literate writers left at The New York Times, recently gave us a nicely stated example of the value of clear writing:

“You’d think after Enron’s collapse that financial leaders and government overseers would question the contents of ‘exotic’ investments that could not be explained in plain English. But only a few years after Enron’s very public and extensively dissected crimes, the same bankers, federal regulatory agencies and securities-rating companies were giving toxic ‘assets’ a pass. We were only too eager to go along for the lucrative ride until it crashed like Tiger’s Escalade.”

The Takeaway: Clear writing can be worth a trillion or two. Maybe more.

A few amusing examples of mixed metaphors (5)

Mixed metaphors are often amusing, as these examples illustrate. However, we writers are usually more interested in informing and persuading our readers than in amusing them. Mixed metaphors may distract our readers and impede information and persuasion. Here are* a few amusing mixed metaphors:

Example of a mixed metaphor

Source: BBC News (website)

A December 8 article, “Irish Republic faces second tough budget in a year,” mixes a medicine metaphor with a cooking metaphor. But at least the author has mixed the metaphors consciously:

“If you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor, administering strong medicine to the sick patient that is the Irish economy is not a recipe for political success in the short term…”

Example of a mixed metaphor

Source: live dangerously be a conservative (blog)

A December 8 post, “Through the Window ala Looking Glass,” combines three metaphors in a single sentence:

“The parameters of the Overton Window are shifting in a kaleidoscopic fashion. As a mixed metaphor of sorts, we need to stop the kaleidoscope, throw open the sash and jump through the looking glass.”

Example of a mixed metaphor

Source: LewRockell.com (website)

A December 11 article, “The Crystal Meth Economy,” contains one sentence with six metaphors:

“Optimism was given free rein to establish an entire hallucination economy, one based on ever-rising asset values pushed higher by ever-rising credit availability, itself a product of pyramiding values on spiraling government debt, laundered through a public treasury that strip-mined the savings of three generations.”

The Takeaway: Mixed metaphors may distract your readers. They may even make your prose impossible to understand. Ideally, you should have someone edit your copy (mixed metaphors are more easily spotted by the reader than by the writer).

*I selected these samples for the diction they contain, not the ideas they contain. On this blog, I am promoting no political position – unless you consider clarity a political position.

Mantras and “The Gray Lady”

Decades ago, most reporters at The New York Times (nicknamed “The Gray Lady”) wrote in clear, often elevated English. By contrast, most of the people they quoted spoke in mantras.*

Today, that contrast is disappearing. Times reporters usually write in mantras; they have lowered themselves to the level of the dullards they interview. Apparently The Gray Lady went slumming and never came back.

Examples of reporters’ use of mantras

A November 7, 2009 article contains many typical examples of reporters’ use of mantras. (Boldface added.)

“Marilyn Wann is an author and weight diversity [vague mantra left undefined throughout the article] speaker in Northern California…”

“Heavier [euphemistic mantra] Americans are pushing back [maniacally popular mantra for resisting] now with newfound vigor…”

“Other less-scientific arguments have also gained traction [vague mantra for “obtained a hearing” or “caught on” or “became popular” or something else?] …”

“…that weight diversity is a good thing and that size discrimination [vague mantra left unclarified throughout the article] is as offensive as any other kind.”

“Weight is an incendiary issue [a confusing mantra; if the reporter wants to imply that some people are using their body mass or their words to (metaphorically?) burn things or people, why won’t she identify who’s burning what or whom – and how and why?]…

The Takeaway: If you are more than 50 years old, you probably remember when young writers could pick up good writing habits by emulating the prose in The New York Times. Today, they would probably pick up more bad habits than good. Don’t emulate Times reporters. Emulate good writers, such as the writers in my “List of Writers to Absorb.” If you would like a copy of the list, please email me at the address shown in my profile. I will respond via email.

*Back then, we usually called them bromides or clichés.