Concise writing is usually clear writing (40) – Christopher Hitchens

The late writer Christopher Hitchens (pictured), a man of rough edges, could be exquisitely moving at times. My favorite passage is this one:

When my father died and was buried in a chapel overlooking Portsmouth—the same chapel in which General Eisenhower had prayed for success the night before D-Day in 1944—I gave the address from the pulpit and selected as my text a verse from the epistle of Saul of Tarsus, later to be claimed as “Saint Paul,” to the Philippians (chapter 4, verse 8):

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

I chose this because of its haunting and elusive character, which will be with me at the last hour, and for its essentially secular injunction, and because it shone out from the wasteland of rant and complaint and nonsense and bullying which surrounds it. (Source)

The Takeaway: To improve the clarity of your writing, spend at least 10 minutes a day reading aloud from writers who write clearly. You will see, hear and feel the stark contrast between careful diction and the scatterbrain diction (sample here) that besets us every day. The topic you select for your reading doesn’t matter, because you’re reading for style not content. If you would like a list of recommended writers and works, please email me at joeroy(at)joeroy(dot)com. Ask for my “List of Writers to Absorb.” I will respond via email.

Have a healthy and prosperous new year!

See disclaimer.

Greetings

Happy Christmas to all,

and to all a good night!

Mr. Clarity

Don’t undermine yourself (2)

Writers sometimes undermine themselves in their titles and introductions. Let me give you a quick example:

While surfing for information on measuring the value of public relations, I saw an article with this title:

“My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys… err… PR Measurement Pros.”

I thought:

He sounds foolish, but I’ll give him one paragraph before I decide whether to quit.

His introductory paragraph:

“Not too long ago, PR News Online published a fun piece about PR superheroes. I loved this story because I’ve always wanted to be a superhero. It made me believe that one day, if I try hard enough and excel in my career, I might be able to gain PR superhero recognition and be invited to join the Justice League… OK, OK, never mind; my kids have me grounded enough to know this is highly unlikely. Though I may never gain superhero status, I have devoted some time to searching for a few real life PR superheroes.” (Links in original omitted here.)

I thought:

His use of fun as an adjective makes him sound childish.

In “I’ve always wanted be a superhero,” he uses present perfect tense, which implies that he, a putative adult, still wants to be a superhero.

He incongruously inserts contrived dialog (“OK, OK, never mind”). Apparently he is unaware how blasted annoying this device is, or how fatuous it makes him sound.

His statement “my kids have me grounded enough” sounds like he’s trying to abase himself. How embarrassing.

I turned to another article, by another writer, on the same topic.

The Takeaway: Remember, intelligent readers judge you by your diction and composition. They do it to avoid wasting time. If they notice that your title or introduction makes you sound immature, ill-educated or neurotic, they (correctly or incorrectly) conclude that the rest of your piece will be silly, incoherent, long-winded, tangential and confusing. Therefore they conclude that you are not a credible source of information and they stop reading right there. So give yourself a chance; build your credibility by using good diction and composition, especially in your title and introduction.

See disclaimer.

You can say a lot in only 100 words (2)

If you write concisely, you can say a lot in only 100 words or so. Needless to say, you need intelligence, discipline and the courage of your convictions. Here are three examples:

Kathy Shaidle (pictured) on third wave feminists 

“When 20-year-old Playboy centerfold Dorothy Stratten was raped, murdered, and mutilated by her estranged husband in 1980, she was adopted as a symbol of man’s inhumanity to woman by germinal third wave feminists (who would have cut her dead when she was alive).

“Conveniently mute, impossible to libel, and as easy to configure as Barbies, deceased women—from Emily Davison to the Montreal Massacre’s 14 engineering students—make the best feminist icons. (Unless they’re Muslim.) The third wave’s anti-porn wing inflated Stratten into an ideological sex doll, into which they poured their loathing of Hugh Hefner and lesser spank-mag deities.” (Precisely 100 words) (Links in original omitted here.) (Source)

Jim Goad on rape hoaxes 

“Despite what basic common sense would dictate, we are repeatedly spoon-fed the mantra that we live in a ‘rape culture.’ And despite ample evidence to the contrary, we are told that women never lie about rape.

“Despite the Tawana Brawley rape hoax and the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax and the fact that on any given day you can search the phrase ‘false rape’ on Google News and dredge up countless stories of bitter, scorned, vindictive, psychotic women falsely accusing men of rape, the howling harpies of latter-day feminism and their gelded male worker elves continue to insist that false rape accusations are a patriarchal fiction.

“That’s why the nuclear-reactor-level meltdown of that mossy old rancidly flatulent hippie rag Rolling Stone over an at least partially—and perhaps entirely—fraudulent gang-rape story at the University of Virginia is so exquisitely delicious.” (140 words) (Links in original omitted here.) (Source)

Christopher Hitchens on the origin of religion

“One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.” (120 words) (Source)

The Takeaway: When we write concisely and don’t waste words on circumlocutions, equivocations or evasions, we can say a lot in 100 words or so. One technique for writing concisely is to deliberately write an overlong first draft and then keep reducing it. For example, to write a 2000-word article, I typically write a 3000-word first draft. In successive drafts, I cut 500 words, 300 words, 150 words, and 50 words, leaving a concise, compelling, 2000-word fifth draft. This technique is quicker and easier than it sounds. Try it.

See disclaimer.

Gobbledygook (6)

Here’s an informative but also entertaining article titled “12 Horrible Gobbledygook Words We Reluctantly Accepted.” It appeared in mental_floss, a great online source of intelligent humor.

An excerpt:

“In 1883, a journalist named Godfrey Turner went on an awesome rampage against purist, writing, ‘What a word! We have here positively the only instance of an attempt to make a noun, by this clumsy inflection, direct out of a raw adjective.’ He wasn’t done with it yet though, going on to write in another publication, ‘whoever first committed to the legibility of black and white that vicious noun-substantive has, it may be hoped, lived to repent a deed that offends forever against verbal purity … among all blundering conceits of modern phraseology, [it] stands distinguished from its misshapen fellows by an unapproachable singularity of malformation.’ ” (Italic and boldface added.)

The Takeaway: Have a great day.

See disclaimer.

A surprising cluster of circumlocutions

Circumlocution is “the use of many words to say something that could be said more clearly and directly by using fewer words.” Academics, politicians, shyster lawyers, and politicians who are shyster lawyers love circumlocution.

You can imagine my surprise when, glancing for the first time at a punchy online magazine called Spiked (the magazine’s owners spell it “sp!ked”), I immediately spotted three circumlocutions in a single sentence.

It was the last sentence of the first paragraph of an article titled “What private schools teach state schools,” by education editor Joanna Williams.

Here’s the paragraph:

As headmaster of the exclusive Wellington College (fees for boarders: £32,940 per year), Anthony Seldon is remarkably coy about championing the privileges of private education. His report for the Social Market Foundation, Schools United: Ending the Divide Between Independent and State, published this week, is his latest attempt to talk himself out of a job through either abolishing fee-paying schools altogether, or eroding any distinction between the state and independent sectors. Seldon’s defensiveness is driven by the fact that private-school pupils are more likely than their state-educated peers to get better exam results, go to the most selective universities, secure jobs in the elite professions and earn more money. (Boldface added.)

Analysis

First circumlocution:

Sheldon’s defensiveness

An alternative:

Sheldon cowers

Second circumlocution:

is driven by

An alternative:

because

Third circumlocution:

the fact that

An alternative:

(Omit these three words entirely.)

And so,

Seldon’s defensiveness is driven by the fact that

becomes

Sheldon cowers because

The magazine’s name and layout are so aggressive that a reader might expect to read Spiked for a year without spotting a single circumlocution, insinuation, euphemism, equivocation or evasion. This reader isn’t going to read any further; life is too short.

The Takeaway: Wake up! Be direct!

See disclaimer.

Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (33)

On Truth and Delusion

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
~Carl Sagan

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called a Religion.”
~Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
~Edmund Burke (pictured)

“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”
~Ambrose Bierce

“It’s not that girls are delusional, per se. It’s just that they have this subtle ability to warp actual circumstances into something different.”
~Rebecca Serle

“[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.”
~Sam Harris

“To join adult human society, you must either become mad or fake it really well, because adult human society is an asylum.”
~Stefan Molyneux

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

Nouns into verbs

If you love words, you will enjoy author, speaker and teacher Ralph Keyes (pictured). He is the language columnist for The American Scholar, where he writes a column titled “Back Talk.” He has a light touch; he is entertaining, not tedious. In a recent column he discussed the making of nouns into verbs, including those “tortured coinages that end in ‘ize.’ ”

The Takeaway: Best wishes to my fellow wordies.

See disclaimer.

Thanks to Paul G. Henning for introducing me to “Back Talk.”

Happy Birthday to Joan Didion

80 on December 5

Bits and pieces (3)

Today we present examples of errors that can make you sound ill-educated.

Misuse of prepositions

“This is the first and most important component to problem solving.” (Source)

The natural preposition here is of: “This is the first and most important component of problem solving.”

“In total, you see about twice the number of four-year students (~11 million) than two-year (~6.5 million).” (Source)

The natural preposition here is as: “In total, you see about twice the number of four-year students (~11 million) as two-year (~6.5 million).”

Use of fun as an adjective

“East Coast Grill in Cambridge - very fun place with great seafood/bbq.” (Source)

An educated grown-up would use entertaining, enjoyable, stimulating, or the like. Even rollicking. But not fun.

Non-parallel use of not only… but also

“He’s not only funny, but also he’s intelligent.” (Source)

The correlative conjunction not only… but also must be used in a parallel construction. In the example above, it is not. One correct alternative would be “He’s not only funny but also intelligent.” For additional correct alternatives, see this page in Grammarly Handbook.

The Takeaway: Whenever you are writing something for publication – even if it’s “just” a blog – present yourself as a well-educated grown-up. Have an experienced editor read your copy; that’s what well-educated grown-ups do.

See disclaimer.

"And the Fair Land"

In 1961, Vermont Royster (pictured), then editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, wrote a Thanksgiving editorial titled “And the Fair Land.” The Journal has run this editorial annually ever since.

The prose is elevated but not pompous; it is stirring but not sentimental. It is clear and straightforward. It is masculine.

He begins:

Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.

This is indeed a big country, a rich country. . .

And continues:

And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. . . .

So the visitor returns thankful for much of what he has seen, and, in spite of everything, an optimist about what his country might be. . . .

And ends:

But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere – in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

The Takeaway: I wish my fellow Americans a happy Thanksgiving.

See disclaimer.

Random thoughts (7)

Using your arm or hand as a map: I spent most of my life in Massachusetts, and on a few occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, I observed a Cape Cod resident use his left arm as an improvised map of the cape and then use his right forefinger to point out a location on that “map.” Because Michigan looks very much like a hand (or mitten), I wondered if Michiganders did something similar. I forgot about that until 1994, when I traveled to Kellogg Company (Battle Creek, Michigan), to accept a speechwriting assignment. When my client wanted to point out the location of a city, sure enough he held up his right hand as a map of Michigan.* These two actions have a certain down-home charm.

Words that are older than we think: We tend to think that words and phrases, except for the more common ones, were recently coined. We are often wrong, by decades or even centuries. For example, last Thursday I mentioned that word of mouth has been used since 1553. Another example is OMG. You might be willing to bet that it was coined in the 1970s by histrionic teenage girls, but a slide show in Dictionary.com says “The first citation of OMG in the Oxford English Dictionary appears in a 1917 letter from the British admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher to Winston Churchill.” The slide show discusses seven other surprisingly old words; take a look.

This trope must drive psychologists insane: There’s a movie trope about mental problems that goes like this; a patient has a deeply buried mental problem and won’t admit it. The psychologist eventually persuades the patient to cry. As soon as the patient cries, he is completely cured or almost completely cured. A well-known example is the “It’s not your fault” scene in Good Will Hunting. Because this trope reduces psychology to a trick, it implies that psychology is vastly overpriced.

Writing as depicted in the movies: Being a professional writer, I naturally notice when a movie shows a writer writing. But as I’m sure you know, such scenes are rarely shown. And when they are shown, the writer is writing a first draft, not a revision (revisions are where real-life writers spend most of their time). Example: In Citizen Kane, newspaperman Charles Foster Kane writes one draft of a manifesto for his paper and runs it on Page 1 without further revision. An exception that proves the rule: In How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the protagonist is discovered asleep at his desk on Saturday morning; crumpled papers suggest that he has been writing draft after draft all night. But the protagonist has contrived the scene in order to impress his boss. So I am not surprised that, whenever I’ve said that speech writers often write more than 20 drafts of a speech, non-writers have stared (or laughed) at me in disbelief. Fiction trumps reality.

To open… When I was in grammar school, I heard this lame joke: “Why did the two bugs run a race on the cracker box? Because the box said ‘Tear along the dotted line.’ ” But in recalling it recently, I realized that fewer packages today display any directions for opening them. Some of the packages are like dexterity tests. As the U.S. population ages, you would think manufacturers would have more, not less, empathy for their customers, more and more of whom are becoming arthritic.

The Takeaway: Be here now.
________________________
*Another charming geographic anecdote about Michigan: When I landed at the nearest airport to Battle Creek, I saw a sign that read “Yes, there really is a place called Kalamazoo.”

See disclaimer.

Beyond narcissism

In the last post, I showed you three examples of narcissistic writing and explained how narcissism can make a writer or public speaker look foolish.

In this post, I show you an article that goes beyond narcissism and into solipsism. It may or may not be a parody; nowadays, it’s hard to tell.

The first thing the typical reader notices is that the author, while writing about providing consulting services to businesses, sounds like a giddy child. She sounds bedazzled by the world of business, and she seems to have only a superficial awareness of how businesspeople think, speak and act.

The second thing the reader notices is that the author doesn’t realize that her typical reader would be familiar with common business expressions such “word of mouth” and “referrals,” and would know that these are long-established expressions* as opposed to hip new fads that they need to be introduced to. The author did not need to say:

… what people call “word of mouth” and “referrals.”

Nor did she need to say:

…what we call inbound marketing.**

By this point, the typical reader suspects that, metaphorically, the author just fell off the turnip truck. She seems to be new to business. There’s nothing wrong with that; we were all novices once. What is cringeworthy is the author’s lack of empathy; she seems to assume that her readers are as callow as she is.

In the next three paragraphs, she keeps the reader cringing:

In this process of speaking with startups and established companies over the past year and 8 months I have come to realize that there should be a profession that is specific to startup consulting. Why not call it what it really is. 

Startup consulting helps startups understand what they need to do to grow: Startups have problems. Startups have ideas. Startups need to define their market positioning. Startups need help.

Myself and all the other Inbound Marketing Specialists at HubSpot should really call themselves Startup Consultants. Every company was once a startup. Aspects of even established companies have startupy parts of them. (Boldface and italics in original.)

The author seems to think she has created startup consulting. To avoid embarrassing herself, all she need have done is take five seconds to Google the phrase “startup consulting.” (I just tried it and got 24,600,000 hits.)

In fact, I know several people who, for 30 years or more, have been consultants to startups. (By the way, I would be shocked if any of those consultants used the word “startupy,” or any other such puerile word – except ironically.)

In general, the author’s logic is unsound; e.g., she speaks of “aspects” that “have parts” and says “Talk with the company about their vision for what they want to solve for.” Her grammar, diction, punctuation and capitalization are careless. However, this post is already long, so I don’t have the space to provide more detail here.

The Takeaway: The author sounds like she has acquired astronomically too much self-esteem. She seems to be completely unaware how childish her writing sounds. If you are a novice and want to avoid a similar fate, do this: Before you write for publication, or speak in public, or become a consultant, first fill in any large gaps in your logic, grammar, diction, punctuation and capitalization. It won’t take more than 300 hours; i.e., it will take a lot less time than the average American adult spends watching television in 12 weeks.*** But it does demand attention, humility and empathy. Do this and you will look and sound a lot more experienced.
______________
*For example, “word of mouth” has been in use since 1553.

**If the author had simply glanced at her employer’s home page, she would have seen the phrase “Inbound Marketing & Sales Software” and could have gathered that her employer assumes that visitors to its website already know what inbound marketing is.

***The average is more than 33 hours per week (source). My math: 33 hours per week times 12 weeks = 396 hours.

See disclaimer.

Don't let narcissistic writing make you look foolish

Because we see so much narcissistic writing today, we can easily slip into narcissistic writing ourselves. If you don’t keep narcissism under control, it can embarrass your readers, your listeners and you. In earlier posts, I gave two egregious examples of narcissistic writing:

The first example was from a blogger who interviewed Tom Peters and then, in her blog post, wasted more than half her words writing about herself instead of Mr. Peters.

The second example was from a college professor who, while introducing Stephen King as a guest speaker, spent more than one-third of the introduction talking about herself instead of Mr. King.

Now here’s a third example:

In 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a eulogy at the funeral of Daniel Inouye. Mr. Inouye was a highly decorated U.S. Army veteran and “one of the longest serving U.S. Senators in history, second only to Robert Byrd.” (Source)

Mr. Obama spent a lot of words talking about himself instead of Mr. Inouye. Reporters cringed; some complained publicly. For example:

In Slate, Emily Yoffe wrote:

“Obama likes to see events through the lens of his own life’s chronology. Thus we learn that Inouye was elected to the Senate when Obama was 2 years old. Now you could make this relevant by describing how Inouye worked to send federal dollars (you don’t have to call it ‘pork’ at a funeral) to transform Hawaii’s roads and schools, for example, so that the Hawaii Obama grew up in had the kind of facilities people on the mainland had long taken for granted. But no, we simply learn that Inouye was Obama’s senator until he left the state to go to college – something apparently more momentous than anything Inouye did during his decades in office.”

In The Weekly Standard, Daniel Halper wrote:

“President Barack Obama used the funeral for Hawaii senator Daniel Inouye to talk about himself. In the short 1,600 word speech, Obama used the word ‘my’ 21 times, ‘me’ 12 times, and ‘I’ 30 times.”

In Taki’s Magazine, Steve Sailer, who called Mr. Obama “a middle-aged bore about his past,” wrote:

“…the subject Obama finds most enthralling is Obama. For example, Obama’s 2012 eulogy for Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), the Japanese-American war hero, used 48 first person pronouns or adjectives (such as ‘I,’ ‘me,’ or ‘my’) to recount how the young Obama had noticed Inouye on TV.”

The Takeaway: Don’t let childish, narcissistic writing make you look foolish. Don’t distort the piece to squeeze yourself in. Refer to yourself only if you are a natural, relevant part of what you are writing. This rule is especially important when you are writing specifically about one person; for example, an introduction, an interview or a eulogy.

See disclaimer.

Shown: A section of Echo and Narcissus, by John William Waterhouse, 1903. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a hunter who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool.

Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (32)

On Sanity and Insanity

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
~Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Social psychologists have found that we are overconfident, sometimes to the point of delusion, about our ability to infer what other people think, even the people who are closest to us.”
~Steven Pinker

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
~Voltaire

“…the social sciences have been in the grip of a political orthodoxy that has had only the most tenuous connection with empirical reality, and too many social scientists think that threats to the orthodoxy should be suppressed by any means necessary. Corruption is the only word for it.”
~Charles Murray

“Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.”
~Jim Morrison (pictured)

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
~Aldous Huxley

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.”

~Richard Dawkins

“No matter how cynical you are, it’s never enough.”
~Lily Tomlin

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

The uninhabited clause (22)

The Uninhabited Clause* is a clause that has a non-human subject: a thing or an idea as opposed to a person or group of persons. There is nothing inherently wrong with using uninhabited clauses, but when we use a lot of them, we bore and exhaust our readers. They prefer reading about people to reading about things or ideas.

Example

For example, here are the first two paragraphs of an article by two economics professors at Columbia University:

The extent of, and changes in, intergenerational mobility of wealth are central to understanding dynamics of wealth inequality, but are hard to measure. In this paper we argue that the share of women among the wealthiest Americans can be used as a proxy for the importance of inherited relative to self-made wealth. This approach assumes that women tend to inherit rather than make great fortunes. If so, a higher share of women among the wealthy would reflect a rise in inherited wealth at the top, and, thus, lower wealth mobility. Conversely, higher wealth mobility where self-made wealth replaces inherited wealth would result in more men at the top of the wealth distribution. Judged by this proxy, and corroborated by various data sources, wealth mobility decreased in the period 1925–1969 and increased thereafter. Such a pattern is consistent with an important role for technological change in shaping the wealth distribution, and can provide an explanation for why wealth concentration has remained stable, despite increasing income concentration in the last three decades.

Over the past century, the share of women among the very wealthy followed an inverse-U pattern, peaking in the late 1960s. According to estate tax returns, in 1925 one-quarter of the wealthiest 0.01 percent were women. This fraction rose rapidly through World War II (WWII) and then more slowly to peak in 1969, when women neared parity with men. Since then, the decline has been marked. By 2000, women’s share had fallen to one-third, its prewar level. While the rise was evident among all wealth groups in the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution, the decline was confined to the very top. Figure 1A graphs the share of women for four different groups in the top 1 percent among decedents by year. Figure 1B does the same for the “living” population with the help of estate-multipliers (a method that treats death as a random sampling device and uses mortality rates by age and gender to infer the distribution of wealth among the living, as described in the Data Appendix).

Analysis

The professors take an interesting topic – wealth – and make it sound academic and boring. In the first two paragraphs, they use 19 uninhabited clauses:

extent and changes are (and) are
share can be used
approach assumes
share would reflect (and) lower
mobility would result
wealth replaces
mobility decreased (and) increased
pattern is (and) can provide
concentration has remained
share followed
one-quarter were
fraction rose
decline has been
share had fallen
rise was evident
decline was confined
Figure 1A graphs
Figure 1B does
that (method) treats (and) uses

And only 3 inhabited clauses:

we argue
women tend
women neared

When we use a lot of of uninhabited clauses, we are in effect telling our readers: “Nothing’s happening here. Stop reading this. Go read a graphic novel.”

The Takeaway: Unless you are writing about abstract topics such as metaphysics or mathematics, you should strive to include persons in most of your clauses. Otherwise, you risk sounding academic and boring.

Note: For comparison, my portion of the text in this post includes 6 uninhabited and 12 inhabited clauses.
_____________________
*My coinage, so far as I know.

See disclaimer.

A few amusing examples of mixed metaphors (20)

Sheryl Sandberg

Mixed metaphors can be amusing. 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 three recent examples of mixed metaphors:

“...Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook whose only claim to fame is that she was on the right boat when it hit pay dirt.” (Boldface added.) (Source)

“Now it appears the new fangs of Title IX will be collecting scalps in a different way.” (Boldface added.) (Source)

“Google AdSense and SBI! are the perfect hand-in-glove fit for you to get your feet wet in the waters of e-business.” (Boldface added.) (Source)

The Takeaway: Mixed metaphors can distract your readers. In some cases, they make your prose impossible to understand. Ideally, you should have someone edit your copy, because it is difficult to spot your own mixed metaphors.

See disclaimer.

Concise writing is usually clear writing (39) – Fred Reed

Fred Reed (pictured), a former U. S. Marine, is a veteran police reporter. He describes himself as “an equal-opportunity irritant.”

His writing style is concise, clear and candid. Unlike many reporters, he rarely hides behind circumlocution, insinuation, innuendo, ambiguity, euphemism or equivocation. For example, in his recent blog post, “Black Power: A Done Deal,” he concisely and clearly states an opinion that tens of millions of Americans are afraid to state candidly – or even think.

Here are three excerpts:

“It is curious that blacks, the least educated thirteen percent of the population, the least productive, most criminal, and most dependent on governmental charity, should dominate national politics. Yet they do. Virtually everything revolves around what blacks want, demand, do, or can’t do. Their power seems without limit.”

. . .

“We must never, ever say or do anything that might upset them, as virtually everything does. It is positively astonishing. One expects the rich and smart to have disproportionate power. But America is dominated from the slums.”

. . .

“The dominance extends to children. When in junior high one of my daughters brought home a science handout with common chemical terms badly misspelled. ‘Is your teacher black?’ I said without thinking. ‘Daaaaaaady!’ she said in anguish, having made the connection but knowing that she shouldn’t have. Blacks control what you can say to your own children in your own home.”

Analysis

I don’t know whether you agreed or disagreed with Mr. Reed’s opinion, but I’m sure you easily understood what the opinion is. He states it concisely, clearly and candidly.

Please keep in mind that this is a blog about clear writing, not about opinions. When I select text samples for this blog, it is because the writing is especially clear (or especially unclear). I quote people who I disdain, people who I admire, and everything in between.

The Takeaway: To improve the clarity of your writing, spend at least 10 minutes a day reading aloud from writers who write clearly. You will see, hear and feel the stark contrast between careful diction and the scatterbrain diction (sample here) that besets us every day. The topic you select for your reading doesn’t matter, because you’re reading for style not content. If you would like a list of recommended writers and works, please email me at joeroy(at)joeroy(dot)com. Ask for my “List of Writers to Absorb.” I will respond via email.

See disclaimer.

How to write a sentence (parody)

In case you missed it. The New Yorker (may require subscription) ran a wonderful parody of an instructional article about writing a sentence. Here’s a sample:

Why sentences? Well, that question answers itself, really. Look at it: “Why sentences?” There’s something missing, isn’t there? I’ll tell you: yes. What’s missing is the rest of the words. And it’s shoddy. It’s shoddy and lazy. It’s shoddy and lazy and frustrating, sticking out there like a bad piece of junk. I’m disappointed on both our behalves.

The Takeaway: Have fun finding the errors in the parody. To read an example of an inadvertent self-parody (also on the topic of writing), go here.

See disclaimer.

How Donald E. Westlake wrote 100 books

The late Donald E. Westlake (pictured), who wrote (and sold!) more than 100 books and screenplays (including The Grifters), and who was one of Stephen King’s favorite writers, described his routine this way:

“If I work every day from the beginning of a book till the end, my production rate is probably three to five thousand words a day–unless I hit a snag, which can throw me off for a week or two. But if I work every day I don’t do anything else, because everything else involves alcohol; and I don’t try to work with any drink in me, so in the last few years I’ve tended to work four or five days a week. But that louses up the production two ways; first in the days I don’t work, and second, because I do almost nothing the first day back on the job. This week, for instance, I did one or two pages Monday, five pages Tuesday, five Wednesday, fourteen Thursday, and three so far today.” He went on to say that he used to complain to his second wife, “I’m sick of working one day in a row!”

His wife described his tools and how he kept them:

“His desk is as organized as a professional carpenter’s workshop. No matter where it is, it must be set up according to the same unbending pattern. Two typewriters (Smith Corona Silent-Super manual) sit on the desk with a lamp and a telephone and a radio, and a number of black ball-point pens for corrections (seldom needed!). On a shelf just above the desk, five manuscript boxes hold three kinds of paper (white bond first sheets, white second sheets and yellow work sheets) plus originals and carbon of whatever he’s currently working on. (Frequently one of these boxes also holds a sleeping cat.) Also on this shelf are reference books (Thesaurus, Bartlett’s, 1000 Names for Baby, etc.) and cups containing small necessities such as tape, rubber bands (I don’t know what he uses them for) and paper clips. Above this shelf is a bulletin board displaying various things that Timothy Culver likes to look at when he’s trying to think of the next sentence. Currently, among others, there are: a newspaper photo showing Nelson Rockefeller giving someone the finger; two post cards from the Louvre, one obscene; a photo of me in our garden in Hope, New Jersey; a Christmas card from his Los Angeles divorce attorney showing himself and his wife in their Bicentennial costumes; and a small hand-lettered sign that says ‘weird villain.’ This last is an invariable part of his desk bulletin board: ‘weird’ and ‘villain’ are the two words he most frequently misspells. There used to be a third—’liaison’—but since I taught him how to pronounce it (not lay-ee-son but lee-ay-son) he no longer has trouble with it.”

(Thanks to my friend Paul G. Henning for pointing out the above passages.)

Mr. Westlake was not the only one

Successful writers share five important traits:

They read a lot.

They are well organized.

They are particular about the tools they use and how they use them.*

They don’t “wait for inspiration” – they have a routine.

They work long hours.

The Takeaway: If you are a beginning writer and are ambitious, get in the habit of reading how successful writers work. This reading will inspire you. It will also teach you many practical and proven techniques that you can immediately apply to your own work. If you don’t know where to start your reading, I suggest Stephen King’s On Writing (exceptionally down-to-earth) and Jacques Barzun’s On Writing, Editing, and Publishing (dated but still inspiring).

_____________
*For example, Mr. Westlake really did type his manuscripts on the Smith Corona Silent Super manual typewriters mentioned by his wife and shown in the picture above. Because that model was obsolete, he hoarded several of them for parts, so that he would never have to switch to a newer model.

See disclaimer.

You’re not a retard, so don’t write like one

In a recent post I mentioned a message that some retard at Microsoft had built into Microsoft Word. I didn’t intend that post as a specific criticism of Microsoft; many suppliers of PC software and online services seem to have retards writing their messages.

Here are a few examples:

Hmm, that’s not the right password. [Is that “Hmm” supposed to be the sound the software makes while it’s “thinking”?] 

Whoa there! There’s nothing here. Whatever you were looking for doesn’t currently exist at this address. Unless you were looking for this error page, in which case: Congrats! You totally found it.

Congrats on successfully changing your email address! We really like your new one. It’s totally awesome! [Am I supposed to believe that the software is so sophisticated that it possesses aesthetic sense but simultaneously is so callow that it uses the vocabulary of a skateboarder?] Now you can log in to Your Account Page using the new email address you provided to us! Cool, huh? [No, it’s not cool. It’s just a mundane function.]

Well, this is embarrassing.

He’s dead, Jim!

Whoa there!

Oops!

Awk!

Ack!

Analysis of the examples

This kind of diction is not clever; it’s frivolous and puerile. It’s not helpful to your readers; it’s distracting. And it’s not polite to your readers; it’s offensive, because it presumes the reader is an intimate friend and is as ditzy as the writer.

In contrast, here are a few messages that are clear, helpful, polite and dignified:

The information you entered does not match our records. Please check your information and try again.

Your account is loading. This may take a moment.

Please wait while you are logged in...

These messages sound like they were written by intelligent, well-balanced grown-ups. The writers have used no hype, interjections, exclamation points or Star Trek quotations. And they have used no false intimacy or false enthusiasm.

The Takeaway: If you are in charge of writing anything that will be read by customers, don’t write like a frat boy, dude, ingénue, bimbo, scatterbrain or flibbertigibbet. In other words, don’t offend the people who enable your employer to pay you.

See disclaimer.

Snirt, whoopensocker and jabble

Snirt, whoopensocker and jabble are three regionalisms. They and 16 more regionalisms are defined in a recent article, “19 Regional Words All Americans Should Adopt Immediately.” The amusing article promotes a dictionary of regionalisms (pictured).*

The Takeaway: If you love words, you’ll probably enjoy the article.

______________
*I have no financial interest in the dictionary.

See general disclaimer.

Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (31)

On fools and folly

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
~Mark Twain

“One of the reasons it has taken so long for some people to finally see through Barack Obama is that people do not like to admit, even to themselves, that they have been played for fools by a slick-talking politician.”
~Thomas Sowell (pictured)

“You’re so handsome that I can’t speak properly!”
~Gwyneth Paltrow, to Barack Obama (Source)

“In university they don’t tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.”
~Doris Lessing, in the novel Martha Quest

“We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren’t perhaps we should be less wise at fifty.”
~W. Somerset Maugham, in the moving short story “Red”

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.”
~Benjamin Franklin

“The fool who knows that he is a fool is for that very reason a wise man;
the fool who thinks that he is wise is called a fool indeed.”
~Buddha

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

Steven Pinker on bad writing by good people

Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker (pictured), a compelling and entertaining writer, recently published an article, “The Source of Bad Writing,”* in which he says that “the single best explanation of why good people write bad prose” is “the Curse of Knowledge.” The Curse is “a difficulty in imagining what it is like for someone else not to know something that you know.” He includes illustrative examples and sound advice on how to lessen or work around that difficulty.

I salute Mr. Pinker for calling attention to the difficulty. During 47 years as a writer and editor, I have seen many knowledgeable people struggle to write clearly for readers who have less knowledge than they do. I struggle, too. Perhaps you do, too.

The Takeaway: I urge you to read Mr. Pinker’s article, “The Source of Bad Writing.” As he says, “Always try to lift yourself out of your parochial mind-set and find out how other people think and feel. It may not make you a better person in all spheres of life, but it will be a source of continuing kindness to your readers.” Read the article, follow the specific advice in it, and you will improve your ability to connect with readers and audiences.
________________
*May require subscription.

International Plain Language Day

See disclaimer.

Readers judge you by your diction, in order to save time

Recently, as I was researching Microsoft’s OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive), I saw a third-party (i.e., not from Microsoft) tutorial titled

“SkyDrive at the Core of the Windows 8.1 Experience – What Does it Mean?” (Source)

The writer had used a cliché (at the core), a massively overused cliché (experience), and a vague pronoun (it). Three clarity violations in 13 words; this is childish diction. I clicked elsewhere.

The Takeaway: Remember, intelligent readers judge you by your diction. They do it to avoid wasting time. If they notice that your title or introduction contains bad diction, they (correctly or incorrectly) conclude that the rest of your piece will be long-winded, silly and confusing. Therefore they conclude that you are not a credible source of information and they stop reading right there. So give yourself a chance; build your credibility by using good diction, especially in your title and introduction.

See disclaimer.

You can say a lot in only 100 words

Elizabeth Warren

If you write concisely, you can say a lot in only 100 words. Here are three examples:

Henry Hazlitt on Karl Marx

“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.” (104 words) (Source)

Karin McQuillan on Barack Obama

“He pretended he would set new records for bipartisanship, and he set new records for partisanship. He promised to heal race relations but intervened to inflame them.  He promised to help the economy, and he harmed it.  He promised to care about the poor, and he abandoned them.  He promised to make us safer from the jihadis than the cowboy Bush, and he has brought the entire Middle East to flames, while throwing open our border to terrorists.  He promised he would act like a pragmatic, conciliatory centrist, and he has been the opposite.” (94 words) (Source)

Elizabeth Warren on Barack Obama

“He believes in a country where everyone is held accountable. Where no one can steal your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street. President Obama believes in a country where we invest in education, in roads and bridges, in science, and in the future, so we can create new opportunities, so the next kid can make it big, and the kid after that, and the kid after that. That's what president Obama believes. And that's how we build the economy of the future. An economy with more jobs and less debt. We root it in fairness. We grow it with opportunity. And we build it together.” (109 words) (Source)

The Takeaway: Always strive to write concisely. One technique for writing concisely is to deliberately write an overlong first draft and then keep reducing it. For example, to write a 2000-word article, I typically write a 3000-word first draft. In successive drafts, I cut 500 words, 300 words, 150 words, and 50 words, leaving a concise, compelling, 2000-word fifth draft. This technique is quicker and easier than it sounds. Try it.

See disclaimer.

Placement of modifiers (28)

David Weidman

Careless placement of a modifier can make a sentence unclear.

Example

“David Weidman, the UPA animation artist whose mid-century style silkscreened prints found a new appreciation in recent years, died Wednesday. He was 93 and had lived in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in a house he built himself since the 1950s.” (Source) (Thanks to Paul G. Henning for spotting this in Variety.

Analysis

The reader may think that Mr. Weidman had been building his house for six decades. A clearer version of this passage would be:

David Weidman, the UPA animation artist whose mid-century style silkscreened prints found a new appreciation in recent years, died Wednesday.  He was 93. Since the 1950s he had lived in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in a house he built himself.

Example

“By promoting to men the message that their own sex is full of rapists, abusers and pedophiles, men will be less inclined to identify with other men, or with men in general, and will feel much less in the way of mutual support or sympathy.” (Source) (Italics in original)

Analysis

The reader may think that the phrase “By promoting…” modifies “will be less inclined…” But he quickly recognizes the meaning as illogical. A clearer and more logical version of this passage would be:

By promoting to men the message that their own sex is full of rapists, abusers and pedophiles, feminists will more successfully prevent men from identifying with other men (or with men in general) and from obtaining mutual support or sympathy.

Example

“Constantly decried as racists by a bien-pensant elite, the overwhelming evidence is that, until recently, Britons have absorbed seismic shifts in this country’s ethnic make-up with remarkable patience and good humour.” (Source)

Analysis

The reader may not easily recognize that the phrase “Constantly decried…” actually modifies “Britons.” A clearer version of this passage would be:

The overwhelming evidence is that Britons, constantly decried as racists by a bien-pensant elite, have until recently absorbed seismic shifts in this country’s ethnic make-up with remarkable patience and good humour.

The Takeaway: Carefully place every modifier as close as possible to what it modifies. When you place a modifier carelessly, you force your readers to guess what you mean. Yes, it’s true that the guessing usually takes only a few seconds and usually is successful. However, you should not be forcing your readers to guess at all. If you force them more than a few times, they may become irritated. If you persist, they may assume you are inconsiderate or stupid or both. They may decide never again to read anything with your name on it. I’m not kidding; many readers will do that, especially the more intelligent readers.

See disclaimer.

A few amusing examples of mixed metaphors (19)

Joe Philbin, Head Coach, Miami Dolphins

Mixed metaphors can be amusing. 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 four recent examples of mixed metaphors:

“The issue that I’m getting at is that there’s not enough, racial, cultural, or gender diversity in game development to create this really lush palette of voices that we need to help move the medium forward.” (Source)

“With one economic fluctuation taking the wind out of the sails of industries that employ that nucleus of well-compensated young people who keep the house of cards from toppling, the entire edifice could come crashing down, leaving urban centers hollowed out just as they were in the 70s and 80s.” (Source)

“Gathering a kindling and setting on fire the hot seat under [Miami Dolphins Head Coach Joe] Philbin should also be on the table, because this was the kind of uneven performance against a winless team that sets people on the road to being fired.” (Thanks to Paul G. Henning for spotting this wonderful mess.) (Source)*

“You buttered your bread…. Now lie in it.” (Probably intentional.) (Source)

The Takeaway: Mixed metaphors can distract your readers. In some cases, they make your prose impossible to understand. Ideally, you should have someone edit your copy, because it is difficult to spot your own mixed metaphors.

See disclaimer.

Staples store gets religion

A few years ago, I published a post about refusing to accept unclear language. I mentioned that I often make a point of refusing.

For example, in retail stores, such as the local Staples, I correct indolent clerks who are not speaking clear, grown-up English.

Well, it appears that I may not have been the only Staples customer to do that. Recently I was in the store and was delightfully surprised to notice that things had improved; every clerk within earshot was speaking clear, grown-up English.

I heard clerks asking customers “Can I help you, sir?” instead of “All set?”

I heard a clerk using the correct, grown-up, second-person-plural personal pronoun, “you,” instead of the childish, white-trash “you guys.”

I even heard a clerk conclude a transaction with “Thank you” instead of “Hah wuh goo wuh” (Have a good one).

How wonderful! It appeared that Staples (or at least that one store) had gotten religion.*

Admittedly, I am quick to complain. But I’m equally quick to praise. I went online and posted a highly positive customer comment, praising by name the two clerks who had waited on me – both of them clear-speaking, dignified, polite and helpful.

The Takeaway: Intelligent people always judge you by your diction. Always. For every irascible geezer like me who complains out loud, a thousand other intelligent people maintain a polite or cowardly silence. But they do judge you. If you could read their minds you would die of embarrassment. So use clear, grown-up English. You can do it; you know you can. Don’t worry about small errors in grammar; people will overlook those if they see that you are trying. Let your intelligence shine through.

________________
*“get religion: Fig. to become serious (about something), usually after a powerful experience.” (Source)

See disclaimer.

Roger Angell on E. B. White

I love to read great writers discussing other great writers. Recently, my friend Paul Henning sent me a copy of a passage in which Roger Angell (pictured) discusses how E. B. White worked. Mr. White was Mr. Angell’s stepfather.

Be sure to read the last line. If you understand it, you are probably an accomplished writer.

White’s gift to writers is clarity, which he demonstrates so easily in setting down the daily details of his farm chores: the need to pack the sides of his woodshed with sprucebrush against winter; counterweighting the cold-frame windows, for easier operation; the way the wind is ruffling the surface of the hens’ water fountain. Clarity is the message of “The Elements of Style,” the handbook he based on an early model written by Will Strunk, a professor of his at Cornell, which has helped more than ten million writers—the senior honors candidate, the rewriting lover, the overburdened historian—through the whichy thicket. “Write in a way that comes naturally,” it pleads. “Do not explain too much.” Write like White, in short, and his readers, finding him again and perhaps absorbing in the process something of that steely modesty, may sense as well the uses of patience in waiting to discover what kind of writer will turn up on their page, and finding contentment with that writer’s life.

He was a demanding worker. He rewrote the first page of “Charlotte’s Web” eight times, and put the early manuscript away for several months, “to let the body heat out of it.” Then he wrote the book again, enlarging the role of the eight-year-old girl, Fern, at the center of its proceedings. He was the first writer I observed at work, back in my early teens. Each Tuesday morning, he disappeared into his study after breakfast to write his weekly Comment page for The New Yorker—a slow process, with many pauses between the brief thrashings of his Underwood. He was silent at lunch and quickly went back to his room to finish the piece before it went off to New York in the afternoon mailbag, left out in the box by the road. “It’s no good,” he often said morosely afterward. But when the new issue turned up the next week the piece was good—unstrained and joyful, a snap to read. Writing almost killed you, and the hard part was making it look easy. (Source)

The Takeaway: Whatever your aptitude, and whatever your current ability, you can become a vastly better writer if you: (1) keep writing, (2) demand the best from yourself, and (3) ask for criticism. Do those three things and you will improve; there is no doubt whatsoever.

See disclaimer.