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The principles listed here are sound and helpful. If you follow them, your writing style will undoubtedly improve.
But do not adhere to them as rigid rules or you will suffer in your ability to express yourself. Passive voice exists for a reason. Long words can add variety, rhythm, and color to your prose. Elongated sentences can help give your writing a flow that a mere parade of short sentences can never hope to achieve, not even after a thousand rewrites. Or not. All such items can be misused as well, and the books are replete with bloated forms of expression used by lawyers, politicians, educators, administrators, and the like who would not know a simple word or sentence even if it stood before them doing somersaults. The key is to know sound principles for clear and concise writing and then to apply them with a rhythmic ear for balance in your forms of expression. That means, yes, use passive voice, long words, and flowing sentences as needed to add grace to your prose but always with the baseline in mind: that is, to communicate in ways that are clear and concise and that people will readily understand for your stated purpose (formal style for formal settings, casual for casual, and whatever fits for anything in between).
I note all this because, years ago, I consciously and diligently set about to attempt to master writing and stumbled upon the rock of "simplicity" during such stretches in my learning process where I had assumed that all one could do was follow such rules. Any attempt to apply such rules one-dimensionally is a mistake, and you will regret trying it. Follow sound principles, by all means, but not dogmatically.
The other major keys to good writing are depth of language skills and extensive reading. No one will read your work unless you have something helpful to say. You get this by working hard to develop your skills, and lots of writing (and reading) is vital to this process.
Much truth here. Years ago I took a summer school course in technical and scientific writing involving intense exercises in ruthlessly eliminating passive voice (regardless of the gymnastics involved in doing so) and many other common tropes of academic writing. The course was like a cell-obliterating chemotherapy against whatever creative writing voice I had managed to put together at that age, and it took years to overcome the effects.
Toss in a good measure of courses involving study of Hemingway and Vonnegut and I was a wreck for years. A passive construction, a ten-dollar word, the odd adverb--all had me in doubt and writing the most vanilla prose.
So it goes.
It was only when I started participating in NaNoWriMo that the forced march of cranking out 1666 words a night for a month combined with the permission to produce a shitty first draft allowed me to being my recovery.
Reading this reminded me of some of the parallels one can make between writing and jazz. Ask any jazz musician and they will say that there are tons of "rules" and "suggestions" for what to play over specific harmonic movements. This is important, vital stuff for a jazz musician.
However, they will also say to forget all that and go beyond, because expression shouldn't be confined by rules.
I've always thought you abide by the rules just long enough to spot their usefulness and then your throw them out the window and create something new.
It's the same in every discipline. You have to know the rules before you can break them.
I'm positive the second comma shouldn't be there. (I wouldn't normally comment on commas, but it seems on-topic...)
Yep. They managed to refute their own title in four words, I am impressed.
Unless the intent was:
Writing clear sentences.
Writing clear (concise) sentences.It depends on what you mean by "shouldn't". The Oxford comma is optional and considered syntactically correct if used. If you mean that it is more concise to leave it out, then thats another issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma
EDIT: Ignore this. I thought he was referring to the first line of the post. "Follow the principles below to write sentences that are clear, to the point, and easier to read."
We're being needlessly cheeky here. It isn't on every page and it isn't on the pdf. I propose it's an accident which happend when the document was moved from Word to the web. Notice the comma makes sense in How to Write Clear, Concise, and Direct Sentences. They just removed and Direct to shorten the title and someone, not necessarily the authors, mistakenly left the comma.
It's not on every page. It is ok in the title of this one
http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/CCS_wordyphrases.html
for example
clear and concise does not imply perfect grammar :).
I assumed it was purposeful: an attempt at irony. Thus, I expected a funny article to be linked.
The article headline has been fixed but the page title hasn't.
Kind of makes me to not want to read the article
Some of the comments I've read seem to misunderstand the purpose of this page. This isn't the objectively best writing style, this is a concise writing style. No, it might not be the most pleasant to read, because extremely to-the-point short sentences sound blunt. The guidelines provided for writing short and concise sentences are very useful, if that's the style you are aiming for.
From the site: Follow the principles below to write sentences that are clear, to the point, and easier to read.
I think they're claiming a lot more than "here's how to write concise sentences, if that's the style you're aiming for."
Note also that this section ("Clear, Concise, Sentences" [sic]) falls under the heading "Improving Your Writing Style."
These are great guidelines. If you don't at least understand them, your style probably sucks. And I say that objectively.
Good writing skills are so important today when you consider that much of the writing people typically do is in an email or a powerpoint, not a romantic novel.
This is a good default style. If you can write clearly, you can also write in other styles for artistic effect. It's like learning scales for your instrument. If you can't play scales well, you can't play Beethoven or George Crumb well either.
To look at it another way, these are the rules that are made to be broken in the service of stylized writing. If you don't know the rules, you won't know when to break them.
Exactly. This is more for technical writing, not sales copy. That being said, a sales copy equivalent would be nice.
Helps in writing commit messages.
This advice seems to mimic much of what's in _Style: Towards Clarity and Grace_, which I found out about from Richard Gabriel (achievement unlocked: LISP connection) and which is probably the most hacker-friendly writing book ever written.
Note, Joseph M. Williams now has 3 different 'Style' books:
Style: Toward Clarity and Grace
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace
Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace
I can't speak to the first 2, but I purchased the 3rd and found it to be excellent.
I second the recommendation of this book.
If you get the chance, read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never us a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
And then please read this essay from the Language Log in reply (or as a counter-point, at least): http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992.
Personally, I really like George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"[0] as a writing guide.
A lot of this information is presented as a consistent methodology when in fact it is very subjective. For example, one of the suggestions is that "you should try to avoid using inflated diction if a simpler phrase works equally well." Unfortunately, it is not clear when a simpler phrase works equally well. I may want to 'use' a certain phrasing in one scenario, but feel it is more appropriate to 'utilize' another phrasing in a different scenario. There is no simple rule that can be applied to determine whether one is more appropriate than the other.
Keep these points in mind when generating error messages to your end users.
I agree with the article that good writing is concise and clear, but don't conflate clear and concise with simplistic and short, thinking the only good sentence is a short sentence, as if we should all write like Hemingway in a hurry.
"Vigorous writing is concise...this requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." - Strunk and White "The Elements of Style"
One of the most cited books for better writing: Elements of Style: http://www.bartleby.com/141/. It's available for free.
There are many "manuals of style" available as well like: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html.
You have to break rule number one to be a politician, corporation, or spokesperson for either. Passive voice is what you use to acknowledge that something fucked up, without placing the responsibility.
"There was a failure of communication."
This topic seems to have legs, so I'll recommend another book in this area: Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose[1] (by Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner).
They are far more thoughtful about style (what it is and how to teach it) than most writing guides. They acknowledge that there is not one best or ideal style for all occasions and that the style they describe and teach is one among many. It's an eye opening book in many ways. (Note: I see that there's a second edition just out. I haven't read that. I read the original in the late 90s. I doubt they've ruined it, but just in case.)
[1] http://classicprose.com/ with excerpts from the book here: http://classicprose.com/csx.html
Are there any software packages or web services that help with this? Writing is a huge part of my job but because I'm english second language I'm lacking the intuitive sense for such rules. Especially since I learned most of my english in my formative years on internet forums...
Clear writing is difficult because it requires clear thought. This makes it worthwhile, even if no one reads it, because it shows the writer whether he or she understands the subject matter.
Muddy writing, by contrast, is generally meant to impress and not convey information. The intended reaction is "I don't understand what you said, so you must be smart." This, unfortunately, seems to work for businesspeople and academics. But I hope that geeks can see through it.
I agree this is a very useful resource for writing in a concise manner. It is something I am attempting to implement in my daily writing. Even though it is old news the best advice I have come across is to write your content. Let it sit for an hour or more. Come back and read it out loud to yourself. This technique is underused and underrated in my opinion. Thanks for pointing out this resource. Bookmarked!
Its kind of an object oriented style isn't it? That doesn't mean that it transfers well to programming where there are other concerns apart from communication. (You don't have to worry about controlling state in your paragraphs). Anyway, for me the laziest way to improve my composition is to just read Hemingway and let the style rub off.
Stephen Fry ranting on language nazis:
Season 2, Episode 3: Language: http://www.stephenfry.com/category/media/audio/
I don't really know who he is, but he make some very convincing arguments.
If you want to improve the clarity of your writing, I also recommend StyleWriter (http://www.stylewriter-usa.com). It's a bit expensive, but the functionality is unique and helpful.
It would be wise to refer to these guidelines while filling out an application for YC.
Also related, feeling lazy? Use Steve Hanov's word-removal tool to remove unnecessary words from your sentences: http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=52
Similar guidelines from the UK's Plain English Campaign:-
Link to my friend's blog. He consults on these matters http://www.thomasheath.tv/blog/
Very interesting, especially for people like me ( English is not my mother language ) these basics are useful to build a strong knowledge about Writing.
Your best bet: Write every single day for at least 15 minutes. Writing isn't a talent, it's a skill.
It's amusing that the "Avoid unnecessarily inflated words" section misspells "implement" as "impliment."
> Writing Clear, Concise, Sentences
With a title like this, I won't even read the thing. So many things are wrong with this first sentence. 1. Why The Capitals For Each Word? That screws with my human word recognition algorithm. 2. The title implies three things: Writing clear, do something concise and something with sentences. That's all but clear to me. "Writing clear": you mean writing the word clear? Does not sound interesting to me. What do you want with "Sentences" and "Concise"? Not clear at all to me. 3. Probably, the author meant something like "How to write clear & concise sentences". That gives the sentence instantly another meaning.