The Writing Coach

I speak to you and you understand immediately. You know, why can't we do this when we're writing? The answer is we can and we should. The fact is that the craft of writing, the kind of writing that we're going to talk about today, is not hard. If you have average intelligence, can think clearly and know your subject. You have everything you need to be a clear and even interesting writer. Hello, I'm Paula LaRock. We're here to talk about the craft of writing.

More specifically, we're here to talk about the craft of writing clearly and briefly. Because it just so happens that that's the kind of writing almost everyone wants and almost no one gets. Why is that? Isn't it interesting that we all want clear, simple, direct communications, yet we cope daily with long, dense, urgent prose that is so difficult to understand? Simplicity in writing is so powerful and yet so rare that when we see it on the rare occasion that we see it, we are impressed beyond all reason, aren't we? You know, as I'll show you later, clarity and simplicity in communication are qualities that can move us like no other. Yet we still grapple daily with that bulging file of memos and letters and reports that we don't understand. We get communications about our daily lives that we should understand immediately.

We get, for example, something from our company about our pension fund. Or we get something from our company, what should be a small brief note about the company's 401k plan. And we don't know what it means. We hope it's all good news. We're not quite sure because we get a note almost any day from almost any lawyer on almost any subject. And tell me honestly, have you ever understood one word of it? Even a simple note say from the IRS, something that always gets our attention, if not our understanding, why don't they say what they mean? You need to send us $5,000 more, or we will take your house. You see, we wouldn't have to worry about the communication from the IRS.

We would say something simple like that. The interesting thing is we find ourselves doing the work that the writers should have done. This is true, isn't it? Here's what I think. I think those folks are sending us their rough drafts. See, that could even be a joke, except I mean it. Because once when I was teaching writing, a student came to me. She was one of the brightest students at the university. And she came to me and confessed that she was having trouble in one of her other classes. And I was a little doubtful about that. I said, well, no, I'm sure not. And she said, I think I may fail. And I said, no, of course not. Maybe you'll get a B. You know, maybe it will destroy your four point. You'll get a B. You'll get a C at the outside, but failure? Of course not. Don't be foolish. She said, I'm just telling you what's happening in the class. And I said, hmm, who's a professor? And she told me, but then she said, it's not his fault. It's not his fault.

He's brilliant. And I said, how do you know? She said, because I don't understand a word he said. See what the problem is there? And I said, wait a minute. You're a smart woman. You're getting always. You go to the class. You're attending the class. You take the notes. You're holding up your end of the bargain. Who's the teacher here? And suddenly revelation dawned. And she said, yes, right. He should make me understand. And then she said the magic three words. That's his job. And she was right, of course. The sad truth is that many people, and unfortunately many learned people, think they would rather impress us than communicate with us. And they also believe that the harder their message is to understand, the smarter they will see.

So they're suspicious of this simple writing activity. The opposite, of course, is the truth. The more educated we are, the more able we should be to translate difficult material into material for a lay audience. Right? This is so. We should be able to transmit it without these pretensions, without the gobbledygook. If our educations don't do that for us, they don't do much, do they? Because what else could be more the responsibility of the educated person than to be able to communicate? Simple messages simply, but better. Difficult messages simply. Another sad truth is, although a smaller one, is that if we called on the phone these same writers, I know I've done it repeatedly, and said, I don't understand this memo report, whatever it is. What will happen?

These people immediately tell us what they meant. Right? So it wasn't that they couldn't do it. No, no, they knew exactly how to do it right away, but they thought they shouldn't do it when they were writing to us. And we find ourselves saying, why didn't you say that? Why didn't you write that to us? The fact is that the craft of writing, the kind of writing that we're going to talk about today, is not hard. We're not talking here about poetry, or about creating art. We're talking about writing simple messages simply, and complicated messages simply. Instead of believing that writing is so hard, why don't we instead believe that it is all that easy? Because, in fact, it is. We go around speaking clearly to one another all day every day. True? Do you make a practice of boring, bewildering, and annoying the people you know?

Does she? You speak to me, and I understand immediately. I speak to you, and you understand immediately. You know, why can't we do this when we're writing? The answer is we can, and we should. That's what the task is all about. Writing seems, in part, so hard, because we think writing is something different from speaking. And, in fact, it isn't. We think it has a formality or an organization or a vocabulary that we don't have. And so we attempt to hide this, this inferiority of ours, you know, behind this welter of words. We adopt a new and ugly persona. Instead of writing, here's that software information you wanted. We're right. As per your request, please find attached hearing. Nice word hearing. Report on current computer software. That may interest you. There's some reason we don't feel we can write simple, straightforward sentences,

and use our own everyday vocabulary, or get right to the point as we would in speech. Let me offer you some assurance. If you have average intelligence, and you can think clearly, and you know your subject, you have everything you need right now to be a wonderful writer. I'm not saying that you can write Warren Peace, or that you can write the old man in the sea. That takes everything that we've just mentioned, and it takes a creative imagination as well, doesn't it? But I happen to believe that the same guidelines, the same writing techniques that will make our writing clear for our everyday communication also, will give us a firm foundation for writing these other creative and these persuasive things. But first, let's find out how to write a clear and interesting memo or letter or press release. And we'll do this in guidelines. I'm going to show you some guidelines that will help.

The first guideline to clear and precise writing is to keep sentences short. Here's a sentence on that very subject from a writer who forgets to apply the guideline he's talking about. So he writes, it's perfectly possible to write clear but idiotic statements. And we must note that fact, although it isn't our concern, at the moment, even if it is a companion benefit of clear writing, is that it's easier to spot errors of both form and logic if we don't have to deal with long and dense passages and jargon-laden or difficult vocabulary. Now, who would like to volunteer to step up and say what that writer just said? But this writer meant, he only meant something like this. Notice this graph from the American Press Institute. It relates the relationship of long sentences to comprehensibility or readability in the sentence. And as you can see here, we lose nearly 70% of the sentence's readability as it grows in length

from 19 to 33 words. Now, a 33-word sentence is not so terribly long. So this finding is too sobering to ignore. Because, in fact, the period is one of our best friends. Some years ago, at a large metropolitan daily, there was a curmudgeonly editor, a neclover editor, too. But a curmudgeonly editor, who was, who had really had enough of the long, dense, turgid sentences that he was getting from one particular rookie reporter, young, of course. So one day, out of desperation, he grabbed a sheet of paper, and this is back in the days when there were actually typewriters in the newsroom. He grabbed a piece of paper through it in the typewriter, rolled the platin around, typed out a page of dots. Grabbed it out of the typewriter. What is your name? Barbara. Barbara? He took it over and slapped it down in front of a rookie reporter, Barbara, and said, here, Barbara, these are periods.

And then he had managed her further. Use them when they're gone. We have our. We can also understand the importance of the short sentence if we remember our own childhoods. Do you remember the day that you wanted to get the magic decoder ring from the cereal box? Remember that famous day? And you ran on the back of the cereal box that to get the wonderful magic decoder ring that you would have to take the box top off and send the box top into the company, but also to send the statement telling them why you like this product so much in blank words or fewer. How many words did they tell you to write? Twenty-five. Very good. It's good, and it's true. They did say twenty-five words or fewer. Why was that?

Is that all they wanted to hear from us? Yes. Yes. They had learned from experience that if we couldn't formulate a sentence of twenty-five words or so and say an interesting and clear thing that we would write a sentence they didn't want to read. That doesn't mean you'll never have a sentence longer than twenty-five words or so, but it does mean that you want to aim for that sentence-length average so that if you have fair reason to write a longer sentence you'll put a short one before and after it, just so that you'll give the reader some rest. It's not the occasional long sentence that destroys writing. It's this dreary march of one long sentence after the other that defies understanding and imagination. One little PS here too. This appeal for brevity doesn't just address the sentence. It addresses the paragraph and the completed piece, the letter and the report.

We all appreciate this kind of brevity. We want to make it as crisp and as short as we can make it. The point is it takes work. If we insist on sending the reader the rough draft, then we also insist on not doing the work that we must do. Mark Twain once apologized to a correspondent to whom he had written for the length of his letter. He said, I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time. Okay, we can move on now to our second guideline. The second guideline to clear a communication is a companion actually to the last guideline. It is this one. Keep to one idea per sentence. Let's look at an example that doesn't follow that counsel. Roberta Harvey, who in ten years brought the city zoo from a small menagerie to a sprawling natural habitat, has resigned as director and will be succeeded by James Ashworth. Currently, zoo curator at Belleville.

Now, that sentence has three major ideas in it, doesn't it? It tells us that the director of the zoo has resigned. It tells us what that director accomplished and it tells us who will be the new director. Each of those ideas is important, isn't it? And each deserves an idea of a sentence of its own. If we separate those major ideas and serve them up with each idea having its own sentence, we can see what will happen in this rewrite. Roberta Harvey, director of the city zoo, resigned Friday. In ten years, Harvey brought the zoo from a small menagerie to a sprawling natural habitat. She will be succeeded by James Ashworth, curator at Belleville. Does that dumb it down? No, of course not. It gives you the message clearly and simply, and interestingly, it makes it more engaging, doesn't it? See, sometimes I think that's what we fail to understand

that, well, of course it makes it clearer if you write clearly, but it also makes it interesting, something that we don't want to forget. And as you saw with this last passage, we moved from foggy writing to clear writing simply by managing the sentence length, right, and by giving each idea its own sentence. So let's move on now to our third guideline. This one is to avoid jargon and formula. Most professions have their own language, and there's no problem in using that language if you know your audience and you know your audience shares that jargon. The challenge comes in when you're writing to a mixed audience or indeed writing to an audience that is ignorant of your specialized jargon. If the language is unfamiliar to the readers though, you must try to use the language they understand, not simply impose the language you understand on the reader. We see immediately how this principle works.

If we consider how hard it is for any of us to understand legal writing, as we mentioned earlier, it so happens that legal jargon and prose style actually obscures rather than promotes clarity. Does it not? But aside from that professional jargon, there's another kind of language that we should skip altogether, and that's the language that we think we should use in any kind of quote unquote formal communication. In fact, is a false and artificial and unnatural language, stiff and unappealing. Here, for example, is a typical business letter opening, and nobody's exaggerating anything here. It's perfectly typical. As per your request during our discussion on the telephone last week, please find attached the report on last year's profits, right? Again, it's typical, but you and I would not say that to one another. You know, the day that I come up to you and say, per your request is the day that you're going to say, I hope she never approaches me again.

Hope I never have to talk to her again. Look at this rewrite of that simple, but absolutely typical business sentence. Here's that report you wanted on last year's profits. After all, we've talked to this person's person is not stupid. This person will have sort of instant recall. We talked about this, and here it is. So you want to just automatically transfer this business jargon into something that you would say, for example, enclosed, please find, should automatically become enclosed is. All right, I'm not talking about wildly radical changes here. Just sensible ones. The president last Tuesday unveiled an unprecedented plan for. Should be the president said he had a new plan for. Because it's the way we'd say it. Also damaging our communications are the cliches and hackneyed language that comes from the media. I see all these nods. I mean the unnatural or a cliched speech we hear on radio and television or that we read

in newspapers and news magazines any day of the week. It's language that's flattened and overused expression. Long ago lost any meaning that it hoped to have. You'll recognize it in verbs such as spawned. Spurred, sparked, triggered. What, targeted. Doesn't it sound a little familiar? Yeah, our adjectives such as burgeoning. Embattled. Skyrocketing. Or expressions such as amid. I love amid, don't you? I mean, like, did you ever use it in your life? Why is it? And you see it about 15 times on any news page. I mean, the storm of protests spawned on their hands. Level the playing field. Another one. In the wake of important journalist, right? The interesting thing about all of this media jargon though is that even the people who use it don't speak this way. That's the telling notion.

If they spoke this way, we might still find it intolerable but understandable. We would say, well, what do you expect from those folks? They talk this way every day so. I mean, do we really imagine that two journalists meet on the street and one says, in a surprise move. The mayor Thursday resigned unleashing a firestorm of controversy. And this person's going to say, and also amid. No, we don't talk that way. No one does. But if they did, we could almost formulate how it would sound. But in order to show you how it would sound, we need to get a couple of volunteers from the audience. And we've dispensed a couple of scripts here. I think I'll pick on this man who looks as though he won't mind. Would you come up, please? What is your name? Hoyt. Hi, Hoyt. My name is Paula LaRocque. And for the moment, forget being Hoyt and be frack. This is frack.

You wonder what he looked like. And let's get another victim. Yeah, why don't you come forward? You have your script? OK. And your name is Marilyn. Hi, Marilyn. I'm Paula. Marilyn can be hack. See, fricking frack can only be so useful. For this particular dialogue, we want hack and frack. OK. So these two folks are going to meet on the street. And they're going to show you what it would be like if media types actually did. Talk this way. How are things at your vacation facility? We had wide-ranging weather all season. One storm dumped more than seven inches of rain on our vacation site, spawning hurricane-force winds and golf ball-sized hail, plus an unprecedented number of uninvited visitors arrived amid the facility restoration. My, that must have decimated your plans for restoring your vacation facility and sparked burgeoning confusion as well. Or was it sort of a defining moment?

It spurred a major shift in sleeping arrangements, triggered sweeping changes in the menu and fueled a personal economic crunch. What a chilling effect. How long were you beleaguered by this worst-case scenario? Well, the vistas left early, actually, but not before offending everyone, including another guest from Delegate Rich, New York. He's a close friend and a lifelong politician who hails from New York City and has close ethnic ties. Did the visitors leave your strife-torn facility then? Heck no, that was just the cutting edge. Next, they launched an unprovoked attack on my housekeeper, 45. Did a heated debate ensue? Did they hurl verbal insults at each other? Too true.

In fact, they unleashed a new round of difficulty and the whole matter escalated to what some called critical mass. Which side blinked finally? Well, in a surprise move, our embattled housekeeper resigned amid allegations of wrongdoing. Is the bottom line that there's a thin line between a soft and a hard line? So it seems, in the wake of the controversy, there was a sharp decrease in the number of vistas to the summer facility. A sudden downturn, a free fall, or a steep decline, I guess. Looks like you've won a stunning victory, better than a staggering defeat any day. I'm cautiously optimistic. But the same scenario could repeat itself all over again next year. De Shavu. That's going to be a big hand. Thank you very much.

That was well read, and your good sports do have done it. Thanks a lot. The important point here is that we have to know the language our audience understands. When we don't, or we don't use it, we run into trouble. Paul LaRoc, the writing coach, will continue. But now, call with your pledge of financial support. This station is depending on you. Good writing skills are essential to good communication. And the better we communicate, the better we get along and improve our lives and our community. Public television is committed to just that kind of communication. Now is the time for you to communicate to your public television station, your pledge of support. Thank you. We've been saying that we need to use language our audience understands.

We often see our everyday communications break down also because of weird problems. I drove through some hot tar. And the tar splashed up on the car on my car behind the front wheel. So I decided I should get this off right away. So I drove into a service station. And I said to the service station attendant, what can I do about this tar on my car? You're anticipating I should have known too. And he looked to where I was pointing. And he said, this tar? And I said, yes.

And he said, what's wrong with it? And I said, what's wrong with the tar? And he said, yes. And I said, well, I don't want it on my car. He paused for a moment. He looked again and he said, you don't. I said, no. And he said, why? And I said, because it's ugly. And then he did the magic thing. He stepped back and looked at my back tire. And I said, wait a minute. I said, tar. T-a-r. Oh, he broke into this broad grin. And he said, oh, tar. I thought you said tar. So our next guideline still has to do with clarity and communication.

This one is a little more mechanical in nature than the ones we've been having, which have been dealing with vocabulary. But this one is to avoid having more than three numbers in a sentence. Numbers demand a lot of readers. And if we're going to be able to hold their attention, we'll have to put a period after about the third number. We seem to be able to hold about three numbers in our minds before our understanding breaks down. The example here shows how this principle works. The ninth grade students did well on most of the three-part tests with at least 85% of the students at more than two-thirds of the schools passing seven of the 28 test objectives. It's clear, isn't it, that we could not understand that sentence at a single or even a fourth and a fifth reading? We can safely get through 85% or so, can't we? Because that's the third number. But as soon as we put that fourth number on, we no longer understand.

We don't seem to be able to hold more than those kinds of numbers in our head. Here's another example. Student financial aid climbed 7.9% last year to a record $30.8 billion with students receiving $15.1 billion in grants, $14.9 billion in loans, and $791 million in work study earnings. Got that? It's really tough, isn't it? It's daunting. We can't swallow all of this in one gulp. But we can make it clear by breaking it into bite-sized pieces, by keeping three numbers to a sentence. Look at this rewrite. Again, you don't have to do anything radical. It's just a little courtesy to the readers. Student aid climbed 7.9% last year to a record $30.8 billion. Overall, students received $15.1 billion in grants, $14.9 billion in loans, and $791 million in work study earnings. It's a demanding sentence. But if we break it into bite-sized pieces

and try to keep those numbers down to 3%, we'll be doing the readers a favor. It's interesting, isn't it, that, through our history, we've considered three to be some sort of perfect number. Have you heard this? Greeks thought it. The Greeks thought it. The Greeks and Greeks are two different groups. You know that, don't you? Okay. And so it seems with the language. What about this letter 3, this number 3? That gets us closer to where we want to go. The next guideline is a companion to the guideline we just finished, because it, too, depends on the number 3. This guideline is to avoid having more than three prepositional phrases in any sentence. Prepositions are those invaluable little words, such as in, by, for, under, around, behind, and so forth. They herald a phrase, don't they? In the drawer of the desk inside the office. Long passages of repeated prepositional phrases

can interrupt a sentence's flow so badly that the reader's understanding will break down. So does the sentence break down, by the way? Let's see what happens when a sentence has too many prepositions in it. Grover Wilkerson, one of three law enforcement officers acquitted in the shooting desks of three use in Graydon, stood by his pickup in the driveway of his home, by the railroad tracks, in Larsenville, and slowly, in a voice-of-the-motion said, it feels good. You know, by the time you get to the, it feels good. You don't care anymore. You see that, you see by this example, that one prepositional phrase after another, muddies the sentence purpose so much, and keeps it from flowing smoothly. It also forces the sentence into an unattractive sing-songy style, doesn't it? That is unclear, if not ridiculous. We've been talking throughout about writing in a conversational style as much as possible when writing. One of the best ways to stay conversational is to keep subject to,

subject verb object sentences as much as possible. This, in fact, is our next guideline. Subject verb object sentences are those structures that have the natural actor, action, acted upon sequence. It's the way we talk to one another, and I think it's probably even the way we think. Can't prove that. It's also called the active voice, right? And who among us would want to write in any way, aside from active, or in any voice apart from the active voice? The sentences on the screen are all subject verb object sentences. That is, they're in the active voice. The president announced my promotion. The tour bus picked up the visitors. The storm washed out the embankment. We can avoid the well-known hazards of the passive voice simply by sticking to subject verb object sentences as much as possible.

It didn't get any more complicated than that. Many people don't understand much about the passive voice. If you do this thing, you don't have to. Of course, we do want some variety in sentences and in sentence structure. But first, we want clarity. We can always embroider. We can always introduce complication, right? First, let's be clear. The next guideline deals with a sentence structure often attempt to introduce variety into writing. This guideline says to avoid backing into the sentence with long and unnecessary dependent clauses. Once again, we violate that clear subject verb object sequence when we start a sentence with, for example, a verb or a preposition. There's not a noun, so it can't be a subject. When we begin a sentence with one of those words, we're beginning a dependent clause, aren't we,

rather than an independent clause or a sentence, so that we have nothing to anchor the action to. Now, as the writer, I know who the actor is. I know what the subject is, but when you come to my sentence blind, you don't. And so it's not clear to the reader we have a lot of action going on, and the readers have to wait for the subject until they can figure out who is doing this action. And the longer the clause, the more difficult it is. Let's look at an example of such a beginning. Maintaining his characteristic cheerfulness, and saying that the company did better than expected last year, Company CEO John Ashley successfully fended off several challenges from the Board of Directors. Again, a typical sentence, but we won't keep the reader waiting for that all-important actor if we start with CEO John Ashley. And we don't have to harm the sentence much. All we do is take the subject out of the middle of the sentence and put it in the beginning, so that we're beginning with,

as we can see here, CEO John Ashley maintaining his characteristic cheerfulness and saying that the company did better than expected last year, successfully fended off challenges from the Board of Directors. Do you see now how that anchors everything is happening to the sentence, to this important CEO? And now we know what's happening in the sentence. Now it's not just the writer who knows. It's also the reader. I also want to be quick to say, though, that a short backing in won't harm the sentence at all. I mean such introductory beginnings as a decade ago, or following the meeting, or before the election. It's the long, the long dependent clause that muddies the sentence and causes the difficulty. Let's move on to another guideline. The next guideline to clear and more attractive writing is to change long and difficult words to short and simple ones. The important thing to remember here is that this kind of simplification does not, as we said earlier, dumb anything down.

That is sometimes the fear for certain writers. Rather, it exposes the message. And when the message is exposed, the chances are very good. The sentence will be interesting. Here are two wonderful examples of how this kind of simplicity works. And also actual examples. 31 metropolitan area residents involved in litigation, accusing them of an alleged loan fraud against the federal department of housing and urban development might settle the case before it goes to trial according to federal court documents. Again, I mean, yes. Is this unusually poor writing, or is it typical writing? Yes. We all agree. It's typical writing. But is it awful? Yes. It's awful. Let's reduce all those words to their simplest form and watch the story or the message emerge. 31 area residents might cut a deal on the charge that they lied to get U.S.-backed home loans.

You see how that happens? It's like a miracle, isn't it? We have the simple sentence that catches up the tension and the conflict of the story and the characters. That's what the reader wants. We also see in these examples that the mistake of trying to get too much in the beginning sentence bothers it, doesn't it? We have other sentences. We're not tied to just one. Here's another example of how a simplified vocabulary can tell a better and clearer story. Diplomatic officials on Tuesday said that they had intelligence information indicating that Iraq had attempted to mislead United Nations investigations, investigators by understanding its nuclear weapons program and the amount of weapons, grade, nuclear material and possesses an actual sentence written by a professional writer. Again, we know this story or we would really be bewildered, wouldn't we, by this sentence.

Again, though, we can use the simple words, the words that you and I would use every day to want another to tell the story and look at the kind of message that emerges. U.N. officials said Tuesday that Iraq lied about how much nuclear stock it has and a U.N. team will search for nuclear sites in Iraq next week. Yay! See, once again, clear, but isn't it fascinating that it's also more interesting? And the other thing that I wanted to mention to you is that in the rewrite, we also had more information. Did you notice? The second rewrite, although it was even shorter than the original form, had the important piece of information that a U.N. team was going to be conducting searches in Iraq for these sites, wasn't even in the beginning, although that beginning was longer. So let's move on to another guideline. This guideline also concerns the language that we choose. It is to cut deadwood and redundancy.

Deadwood means words that aren't doing any work, right? And redundancy means words that are doing the same work, right? Let's look at some examples of both deadwood and redundancy. Of the deadwood. At the present time, how would we say this? No. Okay, good. In the immediate future. Soon. We would like for you two. Please. Good. See how smart you are. Succeed in making. Make. Good. A little bit harder during the course of. During. Good. Despite the fact that. Despite the fact that. Despite the fact that. Although. Good. We have the need for. Good. Give consideration to. For the reason that. Good.

The reason we want to teach these wordy constructions are invaluable. We do not keep our listeners waiting while we cast through We cast through the six hundred thousand words of our Language for. Just the right expression. We will be sending a beach. We are saying let me say to fight instead of. It is useful in conversation. In writing, we could look back at the sentence and say, And one word would mean so much more than five, anyway. Let's look at some examples of redundancy. Again, these are words that do the same work, asian. Basic fundamentals. You were doing so well. Basic fundamentals? Fundamentals? Sure. Or you could say basics. You could, a more standard approach would be to consider basic and adjective, though, isn't it? Some total. End result. Resolve. Joint, partnership, free gift, new improvements.

OK, good for you. Consensus of opinion. Consensus. Good. Good. Past experience. Experience. We should become so good at this that it becomes second nature. Again, don't worry about speech. But in writing, we have the leisure to look back and to fix these kinds of expressions. Paul LaRotte, the writing coach, will continue. The next guideline for this station is for you to call with a pledge of financial support. Call now. Who would have thought that a piece of furniture could be one of the best teachers you may ever have? That's right. Public television has turned your TV set into a learning institution for you and your family. One of the most important things public television has done is to teach children that language can be fun through Sesame Street and other children's programs. I urge you to support your public television stations commitment to a lifetime of learning.

Thank you. We've been talking about choosing our vocabulary to make our writing clearer. Here's still another guideline that will help. Use single, strong verbs instead of several weak ones. For example, when we see some of our laziest verbs, accompanying I-O-N words, I mean by that words that end in I-O-N, we know we can make it clearer and cleaner and briefer.

Some of the lazy words in the language are all the B verbs, for example, is R, was, were, and been. Also such common words as make, take, give, get. Those words are fine when they stand alone. They're active and they do a lot of hard work. But when we see them paired with other words, often they're lazy. And you can crisp, and you can make that communication a little more crisp. Let's see how this works. They made a decision. We should say they decided good. They made a substitution. They, they have the intention. They made an effort. They gave an exhibit. They gave a demonstration. They gave a demonstration. So easy, isn't it? So why would we even think about doing it this other way? You're always looking for the cleanest, simplest expression,

the active verb, rather than a melee of less active verbs. We can move on to another guideline. It offers us still another caution regarding the words we choose if we want to be clear. That guideline is to choose concrete over abstract terms. Concrete words are words that mean the same thing to everyone every time they're used. Abstract words are vague or ambiguous. For example, we might write, as we see here, he manifested displeasure as he gained access to his domicile. Well, you might write that. You know, he could, what's wrong with that? Why is that abstract? Because to say he manifested his displeasure could be anything, couldn't it? You know, and we were taught from the third and fourth grade on, weren't we? That we should write to show rather than to tell. So if we want to make that particular example more

concrete rather than abstract, as it was, we might say, he frowned as he fitted the key into his front door. So now you don't have to say this highfalutin. He manifested his displeasure because now you're showing the reader and the writing will have more impact and more clarity because you're showing rather than telling. Now here are some abstract words in their concrete counterparts. For example, indicate. It's called the leasing. It's called the leading weasel word. The reason people call it that is that it tries to weasel out of everything. We could say, when we say indicate, we actually might mean say. Either it's fine. Show, say, suggest, and it's not just one right answer because that's what's wrong with the word, right? I mean, the fact that we all come up with a different answer shows that it's abstract.

Well, I didn't say that. He said it. I said it indicated it. Right? So sometimes we deliberately choose abstract language because we want to weasel out later. OK, another abstract word is transpire. Is it not? What would we want to say instead? A curve. Happen or a curve? Good. A crisis situation. Crisis, good. Thundersdorm activity. Thundersdorm good. And my favorite, surgical intervention. I didn't make this up. It came from a podiatrist. As you can see, the concrete word suggests something specific. And the abstract word is more suggestive than it is solid. We have one last guideline governing the words we choose. That guideline is to avoid vague qualifiers and choose the precise word. Here are some qualifiers that fuss up your writing. Very, really somewhat, quite, truly, extremely, basically,

totally. Sound familiar? Especially, basically, and totally at the moment. Actually, it can drive some people crazy because there are such favorites of many people. The point here is that if we throw out the vague qualifiers, we'll be forced to use the precise word rather than a less precise word, right? Because when we use very extremely, we use it for a reason, don't we? We hope to intensify or emphasize the word that follows, showing us that we don't have the right word. We need a qualifier. Now, again, this is extremely handy in speech, isn't it? Because, again, we don't want to keep people waiting while we're trying to figure out what to say. But in writing, we have a little more time to choose them or precise vocabulary. If we're trying to emphasize when we use the word such words as very or really, what are we doing when we use a word such as somewhat or quite? We're trying to deemphasize the main word.

So, again, let's try to recall that this language has 600,000 words in it. And in speech, it may serve us well to get a word that's in the neighborhood and then to modify it up and down. But when we're trying to, when we're writing, and we have the leisure to look back at the sentence to try to use the most concrete language that we can, when we use vague qualifiers, we lift the burden of precise meaning off the only word that can carry it onto the back of the only word that cannot. As we see in these examples, extremely important, what might you suggest for another word that would mean this? Good. Crucial was also the word that I had in mind. But, again, that we might think of others that would be equally good. Very unconcerned. In different, I had in mind, and that's probably a good one, if you think for just a minute, it would come to you, too. Let's say we're trying to describe how angry we are. Instead of saying, really angry, we might say good, quite angry, something.

We might say, in sense, there would be other words. We probably could come up with 10 or 15 words in a hurry that would mean the same thing that quite angry would mean. Rather angry. I read annoyed, irritated. You see, once again, these words have degrees, meaning they're much more useful to us because they're more telling. Somewhat angry. Very good, peed. Or peaked, I had in mind, but peed is even better, I think, than peaked. Now, we've alluded to our next to last guideline a little bit earlier. The next guideline to better writing is to try to communicate with rather than impress the readers. Here's a quote from someone, and again, it's an actual quote, from someone who would rather impress than communicate. And we're not only unimpressed, we're furious. This person says this, although many people recognize the allure of it, I think it's very important to recognize

that the sociological effects are only one component of an end result of some want kind of want in addiction. For any such addiction, the user's own expectations and attitudes mindset in conjunction with the social circumstances combined to prove the result. No, I mean, anyone want to have a pop quiz on that? Although this kind of writing is uninibely terrible, we are sometimes rewarded for communicating this way. When I was in graduate school, I was getting ready to do the first composition of one class that was extremely important to me. So I decided, let me sort of clear my way a little bit. So I talked to the professor when he assigned the composition. I said, I was hoping that I was loading the question. I said, when I write this composition, do you want me to be as clear and as brief and as understandable and concise as I can? Or would you like me to write in academies

in pedantic, long, dense, turgid pros? He said, why don't you write it the way you want to? And I will see what I think of it. Guess how I wrote it. I saw that composition recently. It's 67 pages long. It could have been 30. Should have been 30. On page six, there's one sentence that goes the whole length of the page, except for the last two sentences, which start another long sentence that go onto the next page and run almost the whole length. This professor penciled in the margin in tiny, professorial script. Well, exclamation point. As one who can appreciate and applaud a long, but perfectly executed sentence, I must say. I admire this one.

exclamation point. So you see what we're talking about here? I wrote that poorly enough to get an A. Our final and maybe most important guideline of all will all by itself keep us from making the kinds of mistakes using the sorts of pretensions and so forth that we've been talking about. That guideline is to ask yourself how you would say it if you were saying it and to use that conversational style for your writing to. Watch the message emerge in this example when the writer asks himself, how would I say it if I were saying it? Here's his original. A major reassessment that could lead to big changes in Redford County's public transportation system is beginning prompted in part by a new anti-small law that is boosting businesses demand for better service. Again, this is typical writing.

This is a professional writing, a writer, trying to write as well as he could in doing this kind of a job of it. We had this sort of a workshop. And here's the lead that he wrote on that same story. Local government leaders want to make it easier for Redford County residents to get around without their cars. You see the difference? It's not, again, this is a subtle step forward in what we've been talking about. This is not a literal transcription of that first, that original form. We could have done that too, but the fact is, it didn't say anything. You'll remember one word from that original. What word was it? Yes. Good for you. See how? See how well you remember that word? But nothing, when you might even remember major reassessment because it's the first two words you heard, right? But it's not because they mean anything particularly. Why would you remember smog? It is a little word, and therefore easier to remember, but there's a better reason. It's because it affects your life because it has something to do with you

and the quality of life. And of course you remember it. But major reassessments, we don't know. We don't know what it is. Now let's briefly review the 14 guidelines to clearer writing. Keep sentences short. Keep to one idea, per sentence. Avoid jargon and formula. Avoid having more than three numbers in one sentence. Avoid having more than three prepositional phrases in any sentence. Keep to subject verb object sentences as much as possible. Avoid backing into the sentence with long and unnecessary dependent clauses. Change long and difficult words to short and simple ones. Cut, deadwood, and redundancy. Use single strong verbs instead of several weak ones. Choose concrete over abstract terms. Avoid vague qualifiers and choose the precise word. Try to communicate with rather than impress the readers. Ask yourself how you would say it if you were saying it

and use that graceful conversational style for your writing, too. All of these guidelines will combine to clarify your writing. If we do not follow some sort of procedure like this when we're writing and editing, the reader must. And so once again, we'll be asking the readers to do our work. They, rather than we, will have to take the sentences apart, reorder them, trim them, and convert confusing language and structure into readable ones. There's much more to say about good writing. We focused here on what will make our routine writings more inviting. But what we haven't emphasized is that the principles of clarity will build a solid foundation for our creative and our persuasive writing as well. Let me leave you with the work of three writers, whose names you'll recognize and who are notable communicators. They were geniuses, all.

And in these brief passages from their writings, you'll see both the simplicity of genius and the genius of simplicity. Our first sample is from Albert Einstein. He wrote this passage in 1945 after the bomb was exploded that his science helped create. The passage goes, since I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have to say that for the present, it is a menace. Perhaps it as well that it should be. It may intimidate the human race into bringing order into its international affairs, which without the pressure of fear, it would not do. This wonderful writing, isn't it? He was not a genius for nothing. Our second passage is from Winston Churchill, also called one of the best craftsmen of the language in the 20th century. He wrote this passage in 1940. And here we see how Churchill's gift for clear and direct communication helped him to become one of the centuries

most persuasive speakers and human beings. Here's his passage. We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. Remember? Yeah. Our last passage is from the most celebrated American writer of the century, Ernest Hemingway. This is the opening of the Old Man in the Sea. A book so brief and simple that it was said to have written its own law in literature. Here's that opening. He was an Old Man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream. And he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish.

In the first 40 days, a boy had been with him. But after 40 days without a fish, the boy's parents had told him that the Old Man was now definitely and finally, Salau, which is the worst form of unlucky. And the boy had gone at their orders in another boat, which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the Old Man come in each day with his skiff empty. And he always went down to help him carry either the coil lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was frilled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and frilled. It looked like the flag of permanent defeat. There you have it. It's good to write a clear memo. And heaven knows we need more of those. But it's also good to be able to move people, to touch people, and to tell them a story. And isn't it wonderful that the same techniques that will give us one will give us the other? Thank you very much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the program.

And I hope to see you again. APPLAUSE You You You