The periodic sentence (2)

To help make your writing clearer, limit your use of periodic sentences. A periodic sentence creates suspense by requiring the reader to take in and remember a long string of words before he reaches the end of the sentence and finally understands your point.

Suspense is occasionally useful; for example, to emphasize an important point or to maintain interest. However, if you overuse periodic sentences you may tire, irritate and even repel the reader.

In a previous post I discussed an example of the periodic sentence. In that example, the entire main clause (subject and predicate) came at the end of the sentence, following 39 words.

Here’s another example. It’s an excerpt from an article that appeared in The New York Times last Tuesday:

“Hundreds of economists who gathered [in San Francisco] for the annual meeting of the American Economic Association seemed to acknowledge that a profound shift had occurred.

“At their last annual meeting, ideas about using public spending as a way to get out of a recession or about government taking a role to enhance a market system were relegated to progressives.”

The second sentence is a periodic sentence. The subject, “ideas,” appears after only five words, but the predicate, “were relegated to progressives,” begins after 30 words.

So the reader must take in and remember 30 words before he arrives at the predicate. And it is more than a matter of remembering individual words: the reader must also make assumptions about the syntax and remember these assumptions until they prove true or false.

For example, he may assume that “their” in “At their last annual meeting” refers to “economists” or “the American Economic Association.” He may assume that “At their last annual meeting” is an adverbial phrase modifying something that he hasn’t encountered yet.

Then he sees “ideas” and assumes that it is the subject of the sentence. But he has to hold that thought for a long time, because “ideas” is immediately followed by a 24-word adjectival phrase, “about using public spending as a way to get out of a recession or about government taking a role to enhance a market system.” This adjectival phrase includes two gerunds (“using” and “taking”) and an infinitive (“to enhance”).

That’s a lot of syntax to take in, remember and analyze: an adverbial phrase, a (possible) subject, and a long adjectival phrase.

I would suggest this revision, or something close to it:

At the association’s last annual meeting, only progressives wanted to discuss ideas about using public spending as a way to get out of a recession or about government taking a role to enhance a market system.

This reduces the burden on the reader’s memory. It also removes the passive “were relegated” and its ambiguity.

The Takeaway: Periodic sentences should be used sparingly, if at all, in business writing, technical writing and most other non-fiction writing (speeches are a major exception). The more words the reader has to take in before he reaches the subject and predicate, the more likely he is to become confused – or give up and stop reading what you have written. It’s not clear writing if the reader doesn’t understand it. And it’s not useful writing if he stops reading it.

The periodic sentence (1)

Hiding the noun

In the last post, we discussed “the hidden verb,” a trick that politicians* use in order to downplay something stupid, ignorant, incompetent, immoral or criminal that they have done.

Politicians also like to use a trick that I call “the hidden noun.” It is a handy way of making language blander, weaker, more indirect, more generic, or more diffuse. The politician converts a noun to an adjective (which disguises the noun) and then inserts a blander noun.

For example, in a book on sport management, the authors use the bland phrase “liberty and property interests” instead of the simpler and more natural phrase “liberty and property.”

The authors assert that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States protect these “interests.” But if you look up those two Amendments, you will see that both mention “liberty” and both mention “property,” but neither mentions “interests” even once.

Similarly, we often see blandified phrases such as “crisis situation” instead of “crisis,” “market forces” instead of “the market,” and even “cold gazpacho soup” instead of “gazpacho.”

The Takeaway: If you are not a politician, don’t write like one. Don’t try to hide your nouns by converting them to adjectives. When intelligent readers see your blandified phrases, they will suspect you are covering up something, even if you are not. And they will guess on the high side: they will assume a large – not small – extent of stupidity, ignorance, incompetence, immorality or crime.

*I mean politicians not in the narrow sense of people who run for office or “work” for the government, but in the wider sense of all professional deceivers, including shyster lawyers, corrupt professors, and corrupt journalists.

Hiding the verb

Another rhetorical trick that politicians* use is to de-emphasize a negative via a construction that I call “the hidden verb.” In this construction, the writer converts a verb to a noun or adjective, which disguises the action, which weakens the sentence, which (he hopes) de-emphasizes the negative.

For example, Ruth Kelly (pictured), a British politician, was caught embezzling. To attempt to evade responsibility, she wrote a lame apology that included this sentence: “There was no intention to do anything other than comply with the rules.”

It would have been natural to write, “I never intended to break the rules.” But she hid the verb intended inside the noun intention, and then used the bland verb to be (was). The construction also allowed the embezzler to avoid mentioning the agent: herself. Note also that she avoided using the powerful word break.

The Takeaway: If you are writing about a failure or malfeasance – even if only to deny it – remember that intelligent readers will be especially alert for indications of your candor or lack thereof. Don’t damage your credibility by using a “hidden verb.” Even readers who do not formally know the rules of grammar can often spot this awkward construction. It announces, “Warning: Author Is a Weasel!”

*I mean politicians not in the narrow sense of people who run for office or “work” for the government, but in the wider sense of all professional deceivers, including shyster lawyers, corrupt professors, and corrupt journalists.

Hiding the agent

I have been training business writers for more than 30 years. During those years, I’ve learned a lot about how we learn to write clearly. And I’ve learned a lot about the barriers to learning to write clearly.

The biggest barrier is the ubiquity of deliberately unclear writing. Every day, we read and hear the speciously packaged lies and deceptions of politicians, shyster lawyers, corrupt professors, corrupt journalists, and other professional deceivers. (For the sake of brevity, I will refer to these people collectively as politicians.)

Unlike a politician, you are not trying to deceive people. You’re trying to communicate honestly and clearly. However, you read and hear specious language all day long and are at risk of learning to imitate it. If you doubt this, read (or re-read) Orwell’s famous essay on the imitation of decadent language, “Politics and the English Language.”

So, if you are serious about learning to write clearly, your two most important tasks are: (1) learn to consciously recognize specious writing for what it is; and (2) learn to avoid imitating it.

That is why I devote space to showing you examples of specious writing. For example, in a recent post, I explained how a politician abused “uninhabited clauses” in order to manipulate the members of his audience.

That’s a popular trick. Another popular trick – as I am sure you know – is the abuse of the passive voice to hide an agent.

It is proper to use the passive where the identity of the agent is unknown or irrelevant. For example, if you were a real estate broker showing a house, and you wanted to say when it was built, you could properly say: “This house was built in 1848,” without adding true but irrelevant facts such as, “by Peter Hoyt, who was the town doctor at that time.” In the context of your sentence about the age of the house, the identity of the agent (Peter Hoyt) is irrelevant.

But it is improper to use the passive to hide the agent when his identity is known and relevant; for example, by using phrases such as “Mistakes were made” in order to evade identifying the agent who made the mistakes (or, more probably, committed the crimes). This handy phrase is so popular with politicians that it has a Wikipedia entry.

The Takeaway: When you use the passive, be sure to use it properly. As you edit your work, look critically at every passive-voice verb; does the logic of the sentence call for – or at least tolerate – a passive-voice verb there? If not, change the verb to active voice. And if your passives are proper but frequent,* try to change some to active, to spare your readers; passive voice is more difficult to read than active voice.

*In most types of writing, a frequency higher than 15 percent is probably excessive.

Concise writing is usually clear writing (2)

With few exceptions, concise writing is clear writing. There are two reasons. First, in order to produce concise writing, the writer must choose words and syntax more carefully. The result, almost automatically, is clear writing.

Second, concise writing is more readable, because the reader has fewer words to process. Remember, a reader’s short-term memory can hold only so many words; so, the fewer the words you use to make your point, the more likely will the reader be able to follow you and comprehend your point.

In other words, concise writing is both quicker and easier to read.

Here is an example of wonderfully concise writing. It is a definition of the state, from the introduction of a new book: The Left, The Right, and The State, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.:

“It is the group within society that claims for itself the exclusive right to rule everyone under a special set of laws that permit it to do to others what everyone else is rightly prohibited from doing, namely aggressing against person and property.”

It is a near-perfect (or perfect) example of concise writing: that is to say, it could be improved only in minute ways (if at all). Although it defines a complex idea, it is only 43 words long. So far as I can see, every word is needed; remove any word and you weaken the definition.

The Takeaway: Concise writing is usually clear writing. More concisely stated: shorter is usually clearer. When you have produced copy that is pretty clear but you want to make it clearer, try cutting 10 percent of the words. Or, if you are feeling unusually vigorous, try 20 percent. While cutting, you will usually choose clearer words and syntax. (If this is difficult for you, don’t get discouraged: concise writing is one of those skills that develop slowly and steadily over the years.)

Concise writing is usually clear writing (1)