The Art of Readable Writing

This little gem caught my eye on the shelves of Hamline library. The Art of Readable Writing by Rudolf Flesch, Ph.D. (1949). I was curious what kind of writing advice he would give back in 1949. I actually found some very interesting guidance.

He talks about simplifying your vocabulary: "Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that most people are morons... If a person doesn't know much, that doesn't necessarily mean he's unintelligent.After all, intelligence is the ability to learn...'We often overestimate the stock of information readers have, and underestimate their intelligence.' (Glenn Frank)"

"There's hardly anything more important for readable writing: the more you know about the kind of person you are writing for, the better you'll write." I ask myself, "who am I writing this blog for?" I have no idea. Actually, I think it is for me and my future students. I mainly see this blog as a place to store snippets of interesting things I've read.

Lee De Forest said of the radio: "What have you gentlemen done with my child? He was conceived as a potent instrumentality for culture, fine music, the uplifting of America's mass intelligence. You have debased this child. You have made him a laughing stock to the intelligence."

 "This goes for movies, books, magazines, newspapers too. Never mind writing what the public wants - or what you suppose the public wants. (Or what you want the public to think they want.) Study your audience and then write what you want to say in the form that is most likely to appeal to them."

"The first rule of good style is to have something to say...but having something to say also means having a good stock of facts...At the same time as you gather your facts, you must also get hold of two more things: first, your framework, and second, your verbal illustrations. Your reader will need a firm framework and colorful verbal illustrations to enjoy and remember what you have written."

Next he discusses how to get inspired - by doing nothing for a while. "Every professional writer knows that this period of just-sitting-and-thinking between legwork and outline is the most important part of the whole writing process."
"In your writing you must first go over your material in your mind, trying to find the focus, the perspective, the angle of vision that will make you see clearly the shape of whatever it is you are writing about. There has to be one point that is sharply in focus, and a clear grouping of everything else around it. Once you see this clearly, your reader will too. And that, the shape of your ideas, is usually all he is going to carry away from his reading." So true - ggod point to remember and pass to my students.

"The most widely used device for getting ideas into shape is to buttonhole some unsuspecting victim...and to rehearse your ideas aloud. This has two advantages: first, it forces you to funnel your ideas into a limited number of words; and second, the other person will tell you what your idea looks like from where he sits."

"Theoretical insights work best when the thinker is apparently wasting time." J. Robert Oppenheimer

In the next section he talks about where inspiration comes from. "Bright new ideas are always combinations of old ones; they usually come to us after our mind has had a rest after a concentrated effort; and if we do it right, we can sometimes coax them to the surface."

"have a large number of ideas and experiences on hand; put them together; stir vigorously."

"If you keep your mind always in apple-pie order, you'll probably never have that (bright idea). Your combinations will always be the old, well-established ones; your mind will always run in fixed grooves. That's why there is such a thing as a too strict classification or a too orderly outline... If you are used to starting every writing job by making an outline, don't. Wait until you have felt the click. Before that, any outline will tie your ideas down." I love that! More great ideas to pass along...

"Get your facts, think hard of the best way of presenting them, and then "think aside." Let the matter drop for a while until you suddenly hit upon a striking combination of ideas." Some people struggle with the "getting the facts" part, but that's a different problem. Once they figure that out, they can do this.

On intros and conclusions:
"An effective piece of writing should start with something that points to its main theme. In other words, you must put your reader in the right frame of mind; you must start by getting him interested in what's going to come...prepare his mind for what's going to come, but not give away the show"

"A good ending should echo the main theme, just as a good opening should sound it in advance...petering out is the most common fault"

"If you don't follow the natural order of your subject, the result is invariably confusion...compelling the reader to spend time in trifling detective work."

In the next section he suggests writing a story around a character. "There's nothing on earth that cannot be told through a hero - or heroine - who's trying to solve a problem in spite of a series of obstacles. It's the classic formula; and it's the only one you can rely on to interest the average reader...If there is no story to tell, you'll have to invent one."

"An excess of summary and an insufficiency of scene in a novel makes the story seem remote, without bite, second hand"

Use dialogue to include the reader. Dialogue means not just direst quotes, but also questions, commands, exclamations, incomplete sentences, or sentences addressed directly to the audience. Percentages of these types of sentences in fiction will be over fifty percent, in popular (magazine) writing 12 to 15 percent, in technical writing - zero.

"Spoken language is the primary phenomenon, and writing is only a more or less imperfect reflection of it." E. H. Sturtevant



In regards to the rule of not repeating words (which he says should be broken), "Sentences in which the writer has carefully not repeated a word set readers wondering what the significance of the change is, only to conclude disappointingly that it has none.

About grammar rules - "...rules of English usage are not immutable natural laws, but simply conventions among educated English-speaking people. If enough educated people insist on making a "mistake," then it isn't a mistake any more and the teachers might as well stop wasting their time correcting it."
"There's hardly a rule in English usage that holds good in all possible situations; in fact, wherever there is a choice, the mechanical application of a rule-of-thumb will be more often bad than good."

In the next section he talks about sentence length and how it has been shrinking over time. He lays out an example of a long, convoluted and confusing sentence, then says, "The cure for this type of sentence elephantiasis is very simple. All you need to do is stop being stuffy and talk like a human being, and that's that." He quotes a law professor, "casting all conditions and requirements into a single sentence will often compel the unfortunate reader to take the sentence apart so that he can obtain an understanding. His task would have been much easier if the author had broken the sentence down into several sentences." Another tip for students - they often write sentences that are too long.

A great quote about truth from John Horne Tooke, "Truth supposes mankind: for whom and by whom alone the word is formed, and to whom only it is applicable. If no man, no truth. There is therefore no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth; unless mankind be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth: for the truth of one person may be opposite the truth of another."

Tooke says, "language goes through a continuous process of condensation and abbreviation; through the centuries, people manage to cram more and more meaning into fewer and fewer words. What once took a whole sentence or clause to express, can now be compressed into a single word; and language is full of clever devices that make for more and more speed."

"We shouldn't stuff our sentences with tightly packed bundles of abstractions without ever choosing a simpler way of expressing the same idea...Pompousness is often funny, but it has its serious side. Long words are hard to read; sometimes they are actually unintelligible...The trouble is the terrific density of the language. The things being said come too thick and fast for the ordinary reader...In fact if someone cannot understand a piece of writing, the trouble is rarely that his vocabulary is too small; usually he simply cannot cope with the way words are used." In other words, once again, simplify your writing.

"Vocabulary building as a major industry dates back to some intelligence tests that were given to various occupational groups years back. It turns out that big executives topped everybody else in the range of their vocabulary. The (false) logic is simple: top executives have top vocabulary; hence: vocabulary means success. And so the battle cry was born: 'Build up your vocabulary for quick advancement.'...The trouble is that all the hullabaloo about vocabulary building gives the ordinary citizen the notion that there's a premium on rare and unfamiliar words. Instead he ought to realize that they work like a drug - harmless in small doses, but dangerous if used too much."

"First - make sure you know for whom you are writing. Find out what they know, what they don't know, and what they want to know. Write for your readers and nobody else...Now, collect your material. Get all the information you need. Pay special attention to the little things that will add color and human interest... Then, when you have all the stuff you need, stop for a while and do something else... (when you write) Start with something interesting and promising; wind up with something the reader will remember."

"The trouble with most current writing is that it consists of nothing but nouns and adjectives, glued together with prepositions or with be verbs."

Winston Churchill in regards to the "don't end a sentence with a preposition" rule: "This is the kind of arrant pedantry, up with which I shall not put."

"Everyone hears but what he understands." Goethe

In regards to the meanings of words: "One of the basic facts about language is that no word ever means exactly the same to two different people... Your background and experience with a word can never exactly duplicate mine. The basic meaning of the word will usually be the same, but the connotations, the overtones, the feel around the fringes cannot possibly be alike. You can never tell just what a seemingly innocuous word will conjure up in another person's mind... Words are, by definition, unpredictable. That's a fascinating and exasperating fact anyone who writes has to face. Ordinarily we take these differences in connotation for granted. Our language is, and always will be, an imperfect tool of communication and we just have to make the best of it. By and large, people do understand each other even if there may be some amount of misunderstanding around the fringes of practically every word they use."

"When it comes to translation from one language to another, it becomes almost impossible to find words whose meaning matches exactly that of the original. Behind each word in a language is the history of all the uses of the word in that language - and that history is always untranslatable...It's the abstract words that are most apt to be translated in different ways."

"the true source of word meanings is not the dictionary but the people who use the language."

"You can guide a reader's interpretation of the more abstract words - which are the most dangerous - by using as many concrete cases, illustrations and examples as possible."

When we read: "If you think you just pick up on the meanings of words one after the other, you are wrong. Language is not as simple as that. What you do is this: Your eyes move along the printed lines in rhythmic jumps. After each jump they rest for a short while, focus on a word or two, and move on. From time to time, when you unconsciously feel the need of checking back, your eyes move back. And that's the pattern. At about 250 words per minute (average). But that's not the whole story. Words don't mean anything by themselves, or even in groups of two or three. Words get their meaning from the context. So after your eyes have seen the words, your mind assigns to these words a provisional meaning. When the end of the phrase, sentence, or paragraph is reached, your mind rethinks the words in the light of what came after. Reading is really a miracle: your eyes pick up groups of words in split second time and your mind keeps these words in delicate balance until it gets around to a point where they make sense. What all this means to a writer is obvious. A writer must know how people read, what are the main sources of reading errors, and what can be done to forestall them... Don't use unfamiliar spellings or strange words, people's eyes will refuse to read them. Another source of trouble is little words. We ordinarily don't read them at all, but simply assume they are where they belong."

"Nothing is self-explanatory - it's up to you to explain it. And you'll have to do it in words."

"Language is the most democratic institution in the world. Its basis is majority rule; its final authority is the people. If the people decide that they don't want the subjunctive anymore, out goes the subjunctive. If the people adopt okay as a word, in comes okay. In the realm of language, everybody has the right to vote; and everybody does vote, every day of the year. The way you talk and write makes a difference in the English language that is being talked and written today. There is no fixed set of rules: you are making the rules. To be sure, there are limits to what you can do with your language, but they are wide limits, and there is lots of elbow room for everybody. In one way or another, your language differs from that of anybody else. It's part of your own unique personality. It has traces of the family you grew up in, the place where you came from, the people you have associated with, the jobs you have had, the schools you went to, the books you have read, your hobbies, your sports, your philosophy, your religion, your politics, your prejudices, your memories, your ambitions, your dreams, and your love life. The way you form your sentences shows your outlook on life; the words you choose shows your temperament and your aspirations."

"English is a great language; it is perhaps the one that gives the individual greatest freedom. It is poetic and practical at the same time; it is tremendously rich; it's a sort of all-purpose language."
"Language is a social affair; we use it according to the social situation we are in. Our rhetoric is keyed to our place in society - either the one we have or the one we'd like to have. We write stilted English because we unconsciously assume that this is expected of us in the position we happen to fill or the organization we belong to. We have formed a set of habits. and in our speaking and writing we simply piece together the ready-made bits of language that are handy wherever we happen to be. Most of the time we keep our personality out of our language. The easiest thing is to conform."

These last quotes speak for themselves. I love this guy - he writes exactly what I want to express.