A clear piece of political writing (2)

The mayor of Seattle signs the city's minimum-wage ordinance.

Most people who write about politics use too many arcane words, long sentences, circumlocutions, and uninhabited clauses. They don’t use enough concrete examples. Usually they are careless with their sentence structure, the organization of their paragraphs, and the flow of their entire text. These vices make their writing difficult to read and understand.

Today I show you a nice exception: a brief political news item that is well written, readable and clear: “Labor Supporters Hail Seattle’s Landmark $15/hour wage,” written by Matthew Rothschild and published in The Progressive.

Mr. Rothschild has many virtues, as demonstrated in this news item. He uses a good mix of short and long sentences. His sentence structure and flow are good. He writes in a straightforward manner. The quotations are good. It is a smooth piece of political writing – smooth in the good sense, meaning that the reader glides right through it. (By the way, if you are a beginning writer, be aware that all this is harder than it looks.)

For the record, the article is 379 words long and merits a very good Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) score of 56.0, slightly more readable than Time magazine. Some details: words per sentence, 18.0; characters per word, 4.7; passive sentences, 4%.

I do not know or care whether the article is accurate or inaccurate, or even whether it is honest or dishonest; I am interested in the article only as an example of relatively clear writing.

The Takeaway: Whatever your opinions on the minimum wage, progressive politics or Seattle may be, temporarily turn off the political part of your mind (important) and just the read the article for its diction. If you have the time, read it twice. This kind of exercise helps you improve your writing.

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A clear piece of political writing

I select many of my examples of unclear writing from political writing. Here’s why:

Most political writers prefer long words to short words, arcane words to common words, long sentences to short sentences, and circumlocutions to straightforward language. They also favor passive voice to active voice, uninhabited clauses to inhabited clauses, and abstract examples (or no examples) to concrete examples. Usually they are careless with their sentence structure, the organization of their paragraphs, and the flow of their entire text.

These vices make their writing difficult to read and understand.

Today I show you the opposite: a political article that is relatively easy to read and understand: “Just Another Narrative About Privilege,” by Rosslyn Smith. She has not done a perfect job (who does?) but she has taken pains to make her article readable and clear.

For the record, the article is 1,001 words long and its Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) score is 44.9, which is approximately as readable as The Wall Street Journal.

I do not know or care whether the article is accurate or inaccurate, or even whether it is honest or dishonest; I am interested in the article only as an example of fairly good writing.

The Takeaway: Whatever your opinions on class and politics may be, temporarily turn off the political part of your mind (important) and just the read the article for its diction. If you have the time, read it twice. This kind of exercise helps you improve your writing.

See disclaimer.

Ernest Hemingway on rewriting

During a 1958 interview by the Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway (pictured) made a now-famous comment about rewriting:

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.

In the same spirit, E. B. White wrote: “You discover what you really think by hacking away at your first spontaneous utterance.”

The Takeaway: Good writing, if it occurs at all, occurs during the rewrites.

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The readability of long paragraphs

Long paragraphs will have low readability and short paragraphs will have high readability, all other things being equal. But all other things do not have to be equal; if you need to write a very long paragraph in order to develop a topic, you can still make the paragraph comfortably readable.

For some time, I’ve been watching for a good example for you. I found this one:

Example of a very long but fairly readable paragraph

By making economic rules dependent on discretion, our bipartisan ruling class teaches that prosperity is to be bought with the coin of political support. Thus in the 1990s and 2000s, as Democrats and Republicans forced banks to make loans for houses to people and at rates they would not otherwise have considered, builders and investors had every reason to make as much money as they could from the ensuing inflation of housing prices. When the bubble burst, only those connected with the ruling class at the bottom and at the top were bailed out. Similarly, by taxing the use of carbon fuels and subsidizing “alternative energy,” our ruling class created arguably the world’s biggest opportunity for making money out of things that few if any would buy absent its intervention. The ethanol industry and its ensuing diversions of wealth exist exclusively because of subsidies. The prospect of legislation that would put a price on carbon emissions and allot certain amounts to certain companies set off a feeding frenzy among large companies to show support for a “green agenda,” because such allotments would be worth tens of billions of dollars. That is why companies hired some 2,500 lobbyists in 2009 to deepen their involvement in “climate change.” At the very least, such involvement profits them by making them into privileged collectors of carbon taxes. Any “green jobs” thus created are by definition creatures of subsidies -- that is, of privilege. What effect creating such privileges may have on “global warming” is debatable. But it surely increases the number of people dependent on the ruling class, and teaches Americans that satisfying that class is a surer way of making a living than producing goods and services that people want to buy.

That’s a 289-word paragraph, but it is fairly readable. On the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) test, it scores a good 38.9. FRE measures readability by the lengths of words and sentences. The shorter the words and sentences, the higher (better) the score.

Besides short words and short sentences, there are two other major reasons for the good readability of this paragraph:

The first major reason is that the paragraph has the three fundamentals of a good paragraph: unity, coherence, and a topic sentence.

It has unity; that is, it sticks to one topic.

It has coherence; that is, it helps the reader follow the development. For example, it includes transition words such as thus and similarly.

It has a topic sentence; that is, it has one sentence that tells the reader what the paragraph is about: “By making economic rules dependent on discretion, our bipartisan ruling class teaches that prosperity is to be bought with the coin of political support.”

The second major reason is that the author has avoided overusing pronouns, passive voice, and periodic sentences. Overusing these makes a paragraph harder to read.

The Takeaway: If you want your writing to be highly readable: Try to use short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs. Strive for unity and coherence in every paragraph. Try to include a topic sentence in every paragraph. Try to avoid overusing pronouns, passive voice, and periodic sentences. That sounds like a lot to do, but you can do it. If you pay attention to your writing, you will eventually learn how to write almost effortlessly.

See disclaimer.