Style: Some Notes on Clarity and Grace

Earlier this year Pearson published the 12th edition of Joseph Williams’s Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. This is one of the best books on improving your writing style. Like many of the textbooks by Alister McGrath, it seems that the publishers enjoy changing a few things each year, calling it a new edition with an increased retail price. (Scott, Foresman published the first three editions in 1981, 1985, 1989; HarperCollins published the next two editions in 1989, 1994; Longman published an edition in 2005; now Pearson Longman has published editions in 2005, 2007, 2016 with co-authors for these latter editions, as Williams passed away in early 2008).

Here are some notes I took on an earlier edition.

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1. Understanding Style 

The two key principles of the book are: (1) it is good to write clearly, and (2) anyone can write clearly. Not everyone agrees!

The biggest reason for unclear writing is that we are ignorant of how others read our writing.

If you think about these principles while you draft, you may never draft anything.

2. Correctness

There are three kinds of rules: (1) the Real Rules, (2) the rules of Standard English, and (3) invented rules (either folklore or elegant options).

If competent writers violate an alleged rule, then it really has no force. Instead of blind obedience to the rules, we should follow selective observance. It helps to know more about the invented rules than the rule-mongers do.

3. Actions

Because readers prefer that most subjects be characters and most verbs be actions, (1) match the important actions in your sentences to verbs, and (2) make the characters in your story their subjects. This is because readers prefer that most subjects be characters and most verbs be actions.

Revising involves a three-step process: (1) diagnose, (2) analyze, and (3) revise.

4. Characters

Readers want (1) actions in verbs, but even more they want (2) characters as their subjects. You must make the subjects of most of your verbs short, specific, and concrete. When dealing with abstract concept, turn them into virtual characters by making them the subjects of verbs that tell a story.

Many writers are too dependent on passive verbs, but it can have important functions (e.g., not knowing the subject of the action, shifting information to the end of the sentence, or focusing the reader’s attention on another character).

Complex style may be necessary (1) to express complex ideas precisely, or it may needlessly (2) complicate simple ideas or (3) complicate already complex ideas.

5. Cohesion and Coherence

Sequences of sentences are cohesive when there is a sense of flow between how each sentence ends and the next begins. You should begin sentences with information familiar to your readers and end sentences with information readers cannot anticipate.

A whole passage is coherent when the reader has a sense of the whole, depending on how all the sentences in a passage cumulatively begin. Readers want to see topics and subject/characters in the same words; in most sentences, start with the subject and make it the topic of the sentence.

6. Emphasis

Use the end of your sentences to manage two kinds of difficulty: (1) long and complex phrases and clauses; (2) new information (particularly unfamiliar technical terms).

The first few words of a sentence offer point of view, the last view can emphasize particular words to stress.

Help readers identify concepts running through a passage by repeating them (1) as topics of sentences (usually as subjects), and (2) as themes elsewhere in a passion (nouns, verbs, adjectives).

7. Concision

Delete words that (1) mean little or nothing, that (2) repeat the meaning of other words, or that (3) are implied by other words.

Replace a phrase with a word, and change negatives to affirmatives.

Use metadiscourse discerningly to (1) guide readers through your text (e.g., first, second, third; therefore, on the other hand, etc.) and (2) to hedge your certainty as needed (e.g., perhaps, seems, could).

8. Shape

Quickly get readers to (1) the subject of your main clause and (2) past that subject to its verb and object. Therefore avoid long introductory phrase and clauses; long subjects; and interruptions between subjects and verbs, and between verbs and objects.

When you write a long sentence, extend it with the use of resumptive, summative, and free modifiers (but don’t dangle it). Try to coordinate your sentences so that they go from shorter to longer, from simpler to more complex.

9. Elegance

The most striking feature of elegant writing is balanced sentence structure. You can balance one part of a sentence against another by coordinating them (with and, or, but, and yet); you can also balance noncoordinated phrases and clauses.

Think about the length of your sentences only if they are all longer than about 30 words or shorter than 15.

10. The Ethics of Style

Unclear writing can be the result of unintended obscurity or intentional misdirection.

The First Principle of Ethical Writing: we write well when we would willingly experience what our readers do when they read what we’ve written. Write to others as you would have others write to you.

We owe readers an ethical duty to write precise and nuanced prose, but we ought not assume that they owe us an indefinite amount of their time to unpack it.

Clarity is almost an unnatural act. It has to be learned, sometimes painfully.

Ten Principles for Writing Clearly

1. Distinguish real grammatical rules from folklore.
2. Use subjects to name the characters in your story, avoiding abstractions.
3. Use verbs to name characters’ important actions, identifying actions and avoiding nominalizations.
4. Open your sentences with familiar units of information, utilizing introductory fragments and subordinate clauses at the beginnings of sentences.
5. Get to the main verb quickly:
   • Avoid long, complicated introductory phrases and clauses.
   • Avoid long abstract subjects.
   • Avoid interrupting the subject-verb connection.
6. Push new, complex units of information to the end of the sentence, providing transitions to get to them.
7. Begin sentences constituting a passage with consistent topic/subjects.
8. Be concise:
   • Cut meaningless and repeated words and obvious implications and clichés.
   • Put the meaning of phrases into one or two words.
   • Prefer affirmative sentences to negative ones.
9. Control Sprawl:
   • Don’t tack more than one subordinate clause onto another.
   • Extend a sentence with resumptive, summative, and free modifiers.
   • Extend a sentence with coordinate structures after verbs.
10. Above all, write to others as you would have others write to you.

Ten Principles for Writing Coherently

1. In your introduction, motivate readers to read carefully by stating a problem they should care about.
2. Make your point clearly, the solution to the problem, usually at the end of the introduction.
3. In that point, introduce the important concepts that you will develop in what follows.
4. Make it clear where each part/section begins and ends.
5. Make everything that follows relevant to your point.
6. Order parts in a way that makes clear and visible sense to your readers.
7. Open each part/section with its own short introductory segment.
8. Put the point of each part/section at the end of that opening segment.
9. Begin sentences constituting a passage with consistent topic/subjects.
10. Create cohesive old/new links between sentences.