Williams, Joseph M., Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 6th ed.
(New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000)
Part 1: Style as Choice
Lesson 1- Understanding Style
A. Principles: "It’s good to write clearly. Anyone can."
"Have something to say, and say it
as clearly as you can.
That is the only secret of
style" (Matthew Arnold).
B. Style: "How we choose to arrange words to their best effect."
C. Aim: "To explain how you can overcome [unclear writing]."
D. History of clear/unclear writing: Examples: Thomas Paine- "lean
and direct;" Mark Twain- "easy, clear,
concise, direct, emphatic;"
James F. Cooper- "turgid" (inflated,
overblown)
E. Causes of unclear writing:
1. Chronic subjectivity- we only hear "what we
had in mind"
2. Attempt to impress- "we don’t know what
we’re talking about"
3. Bad memories- we create awkward sentences through
fear of
making mistakes
4. Stylistic confusion- "we struggle to master
complex ideas"
F. Solution: "this book is not, in fact, about writing: It is about
rewriting… You write to help yourself
think better; then think
to help yourself write better…"
Lesson 2- Correctness
A. Clarity and choice: "to choose not just what to write but how"
B. Suggested reasons for rules: to "keep the underclasses" under
control;
to serve as a rite of passage, or discipline, to win
a place as a well-
educated person within the institutions of power; to
encourage
"efficiencies of expression"?
C. Three kinds of correctness:
1. Most important: "define the fundamental
structure of English"
2. Next in imp.: "distinguish standard
speech from non-standard"
3. Least important: "invented rules;"
"trivia of usage" (e.g. beginning
sentences with
"and," "but," or "because")
D. Options that signal deliberate care in formal speech
1. Not splitting infinitives: "to conceal
slightly"
2. Using "shall" for the first-person,
simple future: "I shall end here"
3. Using "whom" as the object of a verb or
preposition, rather than "who:"
"Whom am I writing
for?"
4. Not ending a sentence with a preposition:
"She’s the one to whom I wrote."
5. Using the subjunctive with contrary-to-fact
statements: "If I weren’t so
tired I would
leave."
6. Using a singular verb with "none" and
"any": "None of them is here."
E. Words that attract special attention:
1. Aggravate
2. Anticipate
3. Anxious
4. Blackmail
5. Cohort/consort
6. Comprise/compose/consist/constitute
7. Continuous/continual
8. Disinterested
9. Enormity
10. Flaunt/flout
11. Fortuitous/fortunate
12. Fulsome
13. Notorious
F. Hobgoblins: Usages which attract special animosity
1. Using "like" for "as/as if"
2. Using "hopefully" as a general adverb
3. Using "finalize" to mean
"finish/complete"
4. Using "irregardless" for
"regardless"
5. Using "impact" as a verb
6. Modifying absolute adjectives like "perfect,
unique, final, complete"
with other adjectives like
"very, more," etc.
G. Problems with pronouns: number and gender
1. Gen. Rules for number: make verbs agree
with subjects: "Our reasons are
based on solid
evidence;" make pronouns agree with antecedents: "No one
wants to expose himself to
danger;" Special Rules for number: when a
noun is singular in grammar
but plural in meaning, use a singular pronoun
when the group acts as a
single entity: "The staff has met but has not yet
made its decision;" but
use a plural pronoun when the members of the group
act individually: "The
staff have met, but not all of them are in agreement."
2. Gen. Rules for gender: in casual usage use
"they" for indefinite pronouns
like someone, everyone, no
one": "Everyone realizes why they must take
responsibility for their own
actions;" in more formal usage use a singular,
generic pronoun: "Everyone
realizes why he must take responsibility for
his own actions;" Special
Rule for gender: the plural they is increasingly
becoming accepted as "an
entirely correct singular": "No one should turn
in their writing
unedited."
H. Precision: making the rules serve the goal of clarity
Part II: Clarity
Lesson 3- Clarity 1: Actions
A. Making judgments about writing
1. Words of praise: "clear, direct,
concise, flowing, smooth, focused"
2. Words of criticism: "unclear,
indirect, wordy, confusing, abstract,
awkward, turgid,
disjointed, complicated, obscure"
B. Telling stories about characters and actions
1. Express the main characters as the subjects
of verbs
2. Express their actions as verbs
3. Avoid abstract nouns, esp.
"NOMINALIZATIONS," nouns created
from verbs and adjectives
like: "evaluation, indicative, movement,
carelessness, difference,
proficiency"
C. The Writer’s Golden Rule: "Write to others as you would have
others
write to you."
D. From diagnosis to analysis and revision
1. Diagnosis: look at the beginning of sentences for:
a. abstract
nouns/nominalizations
b. a lack of verbs
c. less specific verbs
2. Analysis: locate your characters and their actions
3. Revision: go back through your sentences and:
a. change nominalizations into verbs and
adjectives
b. make your characters the subjects of
those new verbs
c. rewrite the sentences with
conjunctions like: "because, if, when,
although, why, how, whether,
that"
E. A common problem: Why you are your own worst editor:
"as you reread your own writing, you usually
don’t read it; you just
remind yourself of what you intended to mean when you
wrote it"
F. Useful nominalizations
1. It refers to a previous sentence and creates a cohesive
flow.
2. It replaces an awkward: "the fact that"
3. It names what would be the object of a verb
4. It introduces a topic about to be developed
5. It refers to a familiar concept which can be treated
like a character
Lesson 4- Clarity 2: Characters
A. Abstractions as characters: in most stories the main characters are agents
that perform actions directed toward a goal; abstract
concepts can be
treated "as if they were real characters by
making them the subjects of
verbs than feel like actions," e.g.:
"Intention has a complex origin."
B. An overview: two principles:
1. Grammatical structure, the relation of subjects
and verbs, is fixed
2. Literary structure, the relation of characters and
actions, is variable
3. Style is best understood as a bringing of these
two levels into harmony,
i.e. "matching up
characters to subjects and actions to verbs."
C. Use of the passive voice: three questions and one assertion:
1. Must your readers know who is responsible for the
action?
2. Does the active or passive voice let you arrange
words more smoothly?
3. Will active or passive verbs create the most
consistent sequence of subjects?
4. Although the passive allows the writer to avoid
using personal, first-
person pronouns, and seems to
create a more objective point of view:
"The ‘rule’ against
using I or we in academic writing is folklore… The
passive does not make the science
objective; it only makes the sentences
reporting it seem so… behind
those sentences are flesh-and-blood…"
Lesson 5- Cohesion & Coherence
A. Cohesion = "a sense of flow" (when the parts fit together
smoothly)
1. First principle: move from the old to the new
2. Second principle: end with the new
3. First things readers want to know = the topic
(what it’s about)
B. Coherence = "a sense of focus" (when the unity of the
whole is clear)
1. First principle: quickly identify the
"topics" (what it is about)
2. Second principle: show how these topics are a
"connected set"
3. Begin sentences with something familiar to your
readers
Lesson 6- Emphasis
A. Clarity: "In the end is my beginning" (T.S. Eliot):
"Reading a sentence is
like jumping a ditch." Clarity involves
helping the reader to make the jump.
Place the more difficult and unfamiliar
language at the end of the sentence.
B. Emphasis: The ends of sentences are the climactic parts. The "stress"
or emphasis at the end should fall "on the
words that deserve it."
C. Themes: "related sets of key concepts" that run through
connected sentences;
readers depend upon them for a sense of
coherence. Repeat them as subjects,
and again toward the end for stress
Part III: Grace ("the true characteristic of the holy Scriptures… a
surprising
mixture of simplicity and majesty")
Lesson 7: Concision (the first grace of style)
A. Definition: "concision" = "compression" (being
brief and to the point)
1. "I believe more in the scissors than I do in
the pencil" (Truman Capote);
2. "I spare both my reader’s time and my
own, by couching my sense in as
few words as I can"
(John Wesley)
B. Principles of concision:
1. Delete meaningless words ("kind of,
actually, generally, certain," etc.);
2. Delete doubled, redundant words ("full
& complete, each & every," etc.);
3. Delete what readers can infer (e.g. "to
anticipate in advance");
4. Replace a phrase with a word (e.g. "due to
the fact that" = "since");
5. Change negatives to positives ("not
different"="similar;" "not many"="few")
C. Pruning Metadiscourse
1. Metadiscourse = referring to the process of
writing as it takes place:
a. the writer’s
intention: "to sum up, candidly, I believe, therefore, however"
b. the reader’s
response: "note that, consider now, as you see"
c. the structure of what is
being written: "first, second, third"
2. Prune unnecessary metadiscourse, e.g.:
"In conclusion the
last point which I would like to make in regard to…"
3. The "Goldilocks Rule": "Not too
much, not too little, but just right."
Lesson 8: Shape (the second grace of style)
A. Definition: "shape" is the art of assembling complicated
ideas as simply and
clearly as possible
1. "The structure of every sentence is a lesson
in logic" (John Stuart Mill)
2. "Long sentences in a short composition are
like large rooms in a little
house" (William
Shenstone)
B. Diagnosing two kinds of problems which undermine clarity in complexity
1. "interruptions" are breaks in the flow
of your writing, repeated stops and
starts which cause a
"lurch" from one idea to the next
2. "sprawl" is a kind of writing which
"drags on," taking too long to get to
the point, and causing
readers to run out of breath and lose their focus
3. "dangling modifiers" confuse the subject
of the sentence
C. Prescribing some antidotes for "interruptions" and
"sprawl"
1. Start sentences with their main subjects
2. Get to the verb and its object quickly
3. Reduce relative clauses to phrases by
deleting who/that/which is/was, etc.
4. Break subordinate clauses into their own
sentences
5. Use running modifiers (commas &
repetition) to write long, clear sentences
Lesson 9: Elegance (the third grace of style)
A. Definition: "elegance" is "a balance and symmetry among
[the parts of a
sentence] that echo each other in sound,
rhythm, structure, and meaning;"
the barrenness of brevity without elegance is
illustrated: When Calvin
Coolidge, asked by his wife what the preacher
had preached on, replied
"Sin," and, asked what the preacher
had said, replied "He was against it."
B. Elements of elegance
1. Creating balance through a
"coordination" of parts within the whole
(subjects, terms, sounds,
objects, phrases, clauses, etc.), e.g.: "Unless
by habit and necessity people
have to give and take, freedom cannot
be maintained."
2. Creating a "climactic emphasis" by
placing "heavier" words at the end
of sentences (i.e.
adjectives, adverbs, nouns, nominalizations)
3. Creating "a flash of unexpected truth"
through the use of metaphor and
simile
4. Guarding against overblown, unnecessary, and
inflated language through
simplicity. The principle [of
Occam’s Razor]: "Less is more."
Part IV: Ethics
Lesson 10: The Ethics of Prose
A. Definition: "A [literary] action is ethical when as its agent, we
would in
principle be willing to trade places with the
person who is its object."
1. "Everything should be made as simple as
possible, but not simpler"
(Albert Einstein")
2. "The most celebrated prose texts in
American history are the Declaration
of Independence,
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and his
Second Inaugural"
(p. 235).
B. Types of obscurity in writing:
1. Intended obscurity: caused by deceit;
attempting to deceive the reader
2. Rationalized obscurity: caused by arrogance
and/or laziness:
"Whatever can be
thought can be thought clearly; whatever can be written
can be written
clearly" (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
3. Artful misdirection: caused by an attempt to
avoid responsibility
C. An extended analysis: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural
APPENDIX
Punctuation
Glossary