Style: toward Clarify and Grace

Chapter 4: Emphasis

Shift less important information to the left. One way to revise for emphasis is to move unimportant phrases away from the end of a sentence to expose what you want to emphasize
Occasionally, when we shift a phrase, we may have to separate subjects from verbs or verbs from objects. This sentence ends weakly. To create better emphasis, we put that short, less important modifier before the longer, more important object, even if we have to split the object from its verb:
- No one can explain why that first primeval super atom exploded and thereby created the universe in a few words.
- No one can explain in a few words why that first primeval superatom exploded and thereby created the universe.
As we have seen, the older information should come first, the newer last. When it doesn’t, we can often reverse the order of subjects and what follows the verb:
- Those questions relating to the ideal system for providing instruction in home computers are just as confused.
- Just as confused are those questions relating to the ideal system for providing instruction in home computers.
A way to recover the appropriate emphasis is to break the sentence in two, either just before or just after that important idea. Then revise the new sentences so that you guide your reader to the crucial information. That often means you have to isolate the point of a long sentence by putting it into a shorter sentence of its own
If you begin too many sentences with “There is” or “There are,” your prose will become flat-footed, lacking movement or energy. But you can open a sentence with there in order to push to the end of that sentence those ideas that the next sentences will build on.
When you introduce a technical term for the first time or even a familiar but very important term, design the sentence it appears in so that you can locate that term at the end, in its stress, never at the beginning, in its topic, even if you have to invent a sentence simply for the sake of defining or emphasizing that term.

Chapter 5: Coherence I

Principle 1: A cohesive paragraph has consistent topic strings.
Principle 2: A cohesive paragraph has another set of strings running through it that we will call thematic strings.
Principle 3: A cohesive paragraph introduces new topic and thematic strings in a predictable location: at the end of the sentence(s) that introduce the paragraph.
Principle 4: A coherent paragraph will usually have a single sentence that clearly articulates its point.
Principle 5: A coherent paragraph will typically locate that point sentence in one of two places.
The problem is to understand what your reader knows about your subject. Since we ordinarily write for readers who know much less than we do about a subject, it is always prudent to underestimate a reader’s knowledge and make themes explicit.
Don’t strive for “elegant variation.” When you use two words for one concept, you risk making your reader think you mean two concepts.
In short, we can introduce new topic strings and thematic strings in a single sentence. But just as often, we create introductions consisting of two or three sentences, or (though rarely) more. To be certain that our readers do not overlook the importance of those new topic and thematic strings, we put them into the stress of the last sentence of the introduction.
The issue of a paragraph may be one, two, three, or more sentences long; the issue of a section or short essay one, two, or three or more paragraphs;
Most of these problems usually result from the way most of us write our first drafts: When we draft, we are often happy just to get an opening sentence down on paper, never mind whether it sets up what follows (particularly since at that point we probably have no clear idea what in fact will follow). Only as we go on drafting the rest of the paragraph, section, or document do we begin to discover and explore some useful themes. But by that time we may be in the middle of the paragraph or essay, long past the point where our readers expected to find them.

Chapter 6: Coherence II

By POINT we mean the specific sentence on the page that the writer would send as a telegram if asked “What’s your point?” In fact, the better question is not “What’s your point,” but “Where’s your POINT?”
However long the issue, though, readers expect POINT sentences in a predictable position: in the last sentence of an issue. This is another reason why it is important to keep issues short. If you make your issue very long and do not clearly signal when you finish, your reader may take your POINT to be an earlier sentence.
What purposes are served by the sentences preceding the POINT? They typically provide transition from a previous paragraph, make a general claim that the writer will narrow in the POINT, or make a preliminary claim that the POINT sentence rejects
Think of an issue as the overture to an opera, in which the composer announces the themes that he will repeat, modulate, combine, and develop in a variety of interesting ways.
But predictably, a writer will put her POINT sentence at the end of the paragraph because she intends to develop, expand, elaborate, explore that POINT in the following series of paragraphs. In fact, if the writer uses the paragraph to introduce a whole document, then she will predictably locate her POINT at the end of that paragraph.
- In a single opening paragraph such as this, a paragraph that constitutes the issue to everything that follows, the writer typically locates the main POINT sentence at the end of the paragraph, in the last sentence. And if the opening of an article or report consists of more than one paragraph, then the main POINT sentences will appear at the end of the whole opening.
If the paragraph is a body paragraph ,if it does not introduce a section or whole document, you can make your POINT sentence in either or both of two places: (a) at the end of the introductory issue, and (b) at the end of the paragraph; i.e., at the end of the discussion. But if the paragraph introduces a section or even a whole document, then you should put your POINT sentence at the end of that paragraph.
In the issue, introduce key thematic and topical words
In the discussion, keep strings of topics consistent.
In the discussion, repeat those thematic words or words related to them.

Chapter 7: Concision

Attributors and narrators tell your reader where you got your ideas or facts or opinions. Sometimes, when we are still trying to work out precisely what we want to say, we offer a narrative of our thinking rather than its results. If we eliminate the narrators and refocus attention on what the reader needs to know, we make the passage more pointed
Unless you have some good reason to hedge a bit, leave out the fact that any unspecified observer has observed, found, noticed, or seen something. Just state what the observer observed