Chapter 1 - Causes

  • We write a first draft for ourselves; the drafts thereafter increasingly for the reader
  • We measure the quality of writing not just by what is objectively on a page, but by the way we feel as we construct new knowledge out of our experience with the words on the page.
  • Since a writer usually overestimates how much readers know, a writer should give readers more help than he thinks they need.
  • Once a writer expresses actions in nouns, she can then eliminate whatever (usually concrete) agents perform those actions along with those whom the actions affect

Chaper 2 - Clarity

  • Categeories of “unclear” writing
    • “abstract” or “turgid” - actions expressed in abstract nouns
    • “disjointed” or does not “flow” - Separated parts of the sentences that he should have kept together
    • “too technical” - used words that most of us do not understand
  • A quick method is simply to run a line under the first five or six words of every sentence. If you find that (1) you have to go more than six or seven words into a sentence to get past the subject to the verb and (2) the subject of the sentence is not one of your characters, take a hard look at that sentence;
  • When you align subjects and characters, verbs and actions, you turn abstract, impersonal, apparently expository prose into a form that feels much more like a narrative, into something closer to a story.
  • We usually feel we are reading prose that is clear, direct, and readable when a writer consistently expresses the crucial actions of her story in verbs and her central characters (real or abstract) in their subjects.
  • Most writers of turgid prose typically use a verb not to express action but merely to state that an action exists.
  • When the nominalization follows there is or there are, change the nominalization to a verb and find a subject
  • When you find consecutive nominalizations, turn the first one into a verb. Then either leave the second or turn it into a verb in a clause beginning with how or why
  • When nominalization is OK
    • The nominalization is a subject referring to a previous sentence
    • The nominalization names what would be the object of its verb
      • I do not understand either her meaning or his intention.
      • I do not understand either what she means or what he intends.
    • A succinct nominalization can replace an awkward “The fact that”
    • Some nominalizations refer to an often repeated concept
  • When passive is OK
    • we avoid stating who is responsible for an action
    • make your sequence of subjects appropriately consistent, then choose the passive

Chapter 3 - Cohesion

  • With every sentence we write, we have to strike the best compromise between the principles of local clarity and directness that we discussed in Chapter 2, and the principles of cohesion that fuse separate sentences into a whole discourse. But in that compromise, we must give priority to those features of style that make our discourse seem cohesive, those features that help the reader organize separate sentences into a single, unified whole.
  • To end a sentence well, we need only decide which of our ideas is the newest, probably the most complex, and then imagine that complex idea at the end of its own sentence
  • We can create a topic out of the object of a verb if we shift that object to the beginning of its sentence, before the subject
    • I cannot explain the reasons for this decision to end the treaty.
    • The reasons for this decision to end the treaty, I cannot explain.
  • We can also put topics in introductory phrases
    • As for abortion, it is not clear how the Supreme Court will rule.
    • In regard to regulating religious cuits, we must proceed cautiously.
  • The most important concern of a writer, then, is not the individual topics of individual sentences, but the cumulative effect of the sequence of topics.
  • Long sentences may not announce topics often enough or clearly enough to guide us through a multitude of ideas. We need topics as thematic signposts to help us assemble ideas in individual sentences and clauses into cohesive discourse.
  • The secret to a clear and readable style is in the first five or six words of every sentence. At the beginning of every sentence, locate your reader in familiar territories
  • Sometimes, we simply switch the subject and complement, especially when what follows the linking verb be refers to something already mentioned
    • The source of the American attitude toward rural dialects is more interesting [than something already mentioned].
    • More interesting [than something already mentioned] is the source of the American attitude toward rural dialects. ‘
  • If you have a very long subject that does not allow you simply to switch it to the end of the clause, you can occasionally turn it into an introductory clause, allowing you to construct two shorter topics
  • Among groups of related sentences, keep their topics consistent, if you can. They don’t have to be identical, but they should constitute a string that your readers will take to be focused.
  • You may find yourself using nominalizations as topics because those nominalizations refer to ideas in sentences that went before. That is an important use of nominalizations: to sum up in one phrase actions you have just mentioned so that you can comment on them
  • Run a line under the first five or six words of every sentence (in fact under the subject of every verb in every clause, if you can do it). Read the phrases you underlined straight through. If any of them seems clearly outside the general set of topics, check whether it refers to ideas mentioned toward the end of the previous sentence. If not, consider revising.
  • we can make our prose more immediate, more available to the reader, if in those sentences we can also make the reader the topic of a sequence of sentences.
  • Generally, use the beginning of your sentences to refer to what you have already mentioned or knowledge that you can assume you and your reader readily share.
    • Of all the wars in American history, none has exceeded the Civil War in the huge number of wounded and dead. The memory of this terrible carnage is one of the reasons for the animosity between North and South today.