Become a Better Writer: How to Write with Clarity and Simplicity by Donald Powers and Greg Rosenberg of Clarity Global Strategic Communications is a practical guide for anyone who wishes to write more clearly and concisely. The authors know how much time and effort can go into crafting good sentences, whether they’re for an email, report, opinion piece, presentation or speech. Become a Better Writer is designed to help the reader rethink their assumptions about how to communicate effectively, become more aware of common pitfalls and build good writing habits.
This excerpt is published by permission.
Breaking bad writing habits
All too often writers try to impress rather than inform. This bad habit usually results in writing that is needlessly complex. Why? Because if your priority is to show how much you know and the big words you can use, you will be less concerned about ensuring your reader understands your meaning.
Consider this unfortunate example of South African political-speak:
The public sector intellectuals and practitioners are currently engaged with finding responses to the pervasive question on whether it is entirely appropriate in all respects, given the difference in circumstances, values and goals between the public and private sectors to have borrowed so heavily from the tools, techniques and approaches of the private sector? … What we can say without fear of contradiction is the fact that some of the approaches and management techniques that have found its way into the public sector through that paradigmatic shift of thinking that has come over the discipline of public administration, have resulted, to an extent, in improved operational effectiveness. I would like to be so bold as to categorically state that project management is one of the approaches that we have extended to the public sector that have much to offer to our effective functioning. And I can say this even in the knowledge that the full potential thereof have hitherto not been taken advantage of. [Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, “Project management in the public sector,” address given at IQPC project conference, Sandton, 26 November 2003.]
South Africa’s then-Minister of Public Service and Administration uttered these unmemorable words at a 2003 conference in Johannesburg. This mélange of buzzwords, truisms, jargon and pseudo-intellectual phraseology can thankfully be reduced to its essence as follows: As the discipline of public administration has evolved, so have management techniques. Project management approaches, including those borrowed from the private sector, have helped to improve public-sector effectiveness – and we can do more with these tools.
This example shows how much waffle can be cut away if you care about making your point clearly and concisely. Even if your subject matter is complex or technical, you can still write about it clearly. What matters is your attitude to the reader. You need to connect with them, sharing what you know rather than making them think, “Wow, this person seems to know so much – but I’m not sure I understand what they’re saying.”
We often learn by example. Sometimes we learn to write in a way that is suitable for a very limited audience – for example, for your manager or the person who marks your assignments. The same is true if you work in an organisation where all your colleagues, particularly those more senior than you, are determined to sail the seas of jargon.
Take academic writing. It’s common for first-year university or college students to get back their initial assignments heavily marked up with their tutor’s red ink. And so students quickly learn to write in a more formal way – after all, your marks depend on it! You learn to avoid the first person (“I”) and colloquial expressions. You lengthen your sentences and use more academic phrases. You qualify every point you make. You hesitate to voice your own opinions. Your essays become a forest of references. In short, you imitate how your teachers write and, in the process, sacrifice clarity on the altar of complexity.
A major reason academic writing is often unfriendly to the reader is that academics aren’t trained to write simply and clearly, nor do they generally care to. As linguist and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker points out in his article “Why academics stink at writing”, they have spent years writing things in a complex way and have been rewarded for doing so. [Steven Pinker, “Why academics stink at writing”, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 September 2014.] They write for their peers rather than students or non-specialists. If they keep doing this for years and nobody ever challenges them to write more accessibly, there’s no incentive for them to change.
This is true not only for academics, but for art critics, engineers, economists, lawyers, policy specialists – in short, anyone who specialises in a complex subject. It’s often easier to write in a convoluted way using a lot of jargon than it is to write simply. In some cases, the writer may not fully grasp what they are writing about and finds it easier to obfuscate than to clarify. It takes time and effort to write clearly; it also requires changing one’s attitude so that the reader’s understanding comes first. Fortunately, there are signs of progress. Academic writing published on open access platforms (such as The Conversation) needs to be written in accessible language if it’s to be understood by a general audience and shared widely.
Sharpening your ability to write clearly will serve you well, whatever your line of work. One of the most valuable intellectual skills is to ask questions – and your questions should extend to how you and those around you communicate. Even if you consider yourself a strong writer, some of the writing habits you formed at school, at university and in the workplace may need to be reconsidered and adjusted. Let your incentive be this: your readers will be impressed not by how grand you sound but by how clearly you’ve communicated your ideas – and they will want to read more of your work.
