On Writing Well
The secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb…there are a thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of the sentence.
How can we achieve such freedom from clutter? The answer is to clear our heads of clutter. Clear thinking becomes clear writing, one can’t exist without the other.
Writers must therefore constantly ask, what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know. Then they must look at what they have written and ask: have I said it? Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away.
Reexamine every sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or prententious or faddish? Are you carrying on to something useless just because you think it’s beautiful?
Simplify, simplify.
***
Style is who you are. You only need to be true to yourself to find it gradually emerging from under the accumulated clutter and debris, growing more distinctive everyday. Just as it takes time to find yourself as a person, it takes time to find yourself as a stylist, and even then your style will change as you grow older.
Express who you are. Relax and say what you want to say.
-- condensed from the book On Writing Well, by William Zisner
Read it again, and see that it’s true for design as well.
posted by Pon @ 10:59 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentence short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." William Strunk Jr.
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Ernest Hemingway once said that "writing is architecture, it is not interior decorating."
W. Strunk said it best, so I shall repeat part of the quote: "... This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."
Honestly, Ferdz, your writing is quite concise in the sense that your sentences are full of detail, your thoughts are coherent, and you don't repeat the same idea twice in your essays without variation. Oh yes, the small font size also helps :)
humans tend to organize information into neat little digestible blocks. but sometimes we suffer from verbal diarrhea, when we're "emoting" or "expressing" or whatever you want to call it. if you simply want to vent and have no intention of other people understanding you, well, there is no point in being clutter-free and coherent. however, most people write with some general intent. and in these instances you have to think about being an effective writer, and not just shoot off disjunctive thoughts at random. so i guess, in the end, you have to ask, what am i trying to do??? are you trying to have people respond, or are you simply talking to yourself?
I hope we don't miss the big picture here: the parallelism of architecture and writing is more about their essentially being structures.
They are not just about their being concise or the subjects that they cover. Those are just details or "decorations".
In the essence of their being structures, they are more about clarity and composition.
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