Style

Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace

Grace

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

Truman Capote

Five Principles on Concision

Delete meaningless words

Delete doubled words

Delete what readers can infer

Replace a phrase with a word

Change negatives to affirmatives

Delete Meaningless Words

Examples:

Productivity actually depends on certain factors that basically involve psychology more than any particular technology

Productivity depends on psychology more than on technology.

kind of basically really

generally actually individual

Delete Doubled Words

Full and Complete

Each and Every

Any and All

Hopes

And

Desires

Delete What Readers Infer

Common Redundancy

Terrible tragedy

Free giftEach individual

Basic fundamentals

Replace a Phrase with a Word

Carefully read what you have written

edit

The thing you do before anything else

First

Use 24 instead of 36 Replace

Nouns instead of verbs Nominalizations

Sequences of subjects and verbs

Clauses

Change Negatives to Affirmatives

Do not translate into affirmative if emphasizing negative

Not different similar

Not include omit

Another Form of Redundancy

Metadiscourse

Our intentionsto sum up, I believe

The reader’s responsenote that, as you see

Structure of our textfirst, second, therefore

Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms

in a little house

William Shenstone

Providing Sentences with Shape

• Get to the subject, then verb quickly• Avoid long subjects• Avoid interrupting subject and verb• Avoid adding one subordinate clause to another• Use elements parallel in grammar and sense

Ethical Responsibility

Write to others as you would have others write to you.