Pity the Poor Reader

Addendum A 

The Un-Commandments

Thou shalt not preach:

Stash away your soapbox when it’s time to write. Never preach, lecture or scold. Lure readers in with the clarity of your observation, the compelling logic of your analysis or the accumulative weight of your reporting. You want to trick the reader into thinking he has reached your conclusion on his own. It's much more persuasive.

Think about it. When was the last time you heeded a scolding?

Ping-pongth not:

If "but, yet, and" - or worse, "moreover, furthermore or "nonetheless" - pepper your writing then you are ping-ponging. That is, the organization of your story is bouncing all over the place.

Dependence on conjunctions and adverbs to transition between ideas signals confusion. It's clear to readers that you haven’t yet figured out what you want to say and how best to say it. Your story hangs from wobbly organizational scaffolding.

The remedy? Layer ideas logically one atop another, forming a pyramid building to a pinnacle of higher understanding. Adverbs and conjunctions will fall away as ideas lock in step.

Leave ping-ponging to table tennis where it belongs.

Swellth not thy prose:

Good writing is as lean as a beggar. Squeeze out all but essential words. Don’t swell sentences with long-winded clauses, especially at the outset. Readers will give up reading before they get to your point. Say what you mean as simply and directly as possible. That's hard enough as it is, without adding all kinds of dependent clauses.

Beware the verb "to be”:

It represents what grammarians call the passive voice. This verb construction tends to bloat sentences with unnecessary words and phrases.

Don't say, for example, "Dick was seen by Jane," but rather "Jane sees Dick." See how this active voice construction squeezes out unnecessary words and makes the sentence simpler and more direct?

Now, repeat after me, "Dick sees Jane." Make this your mantra when writing every sentence.

Thy story empurpleth not:

We’re all imperfect at best. Let your writing reflect that simple truth. Please, spare us, the poor reader, from having to endure mayors, athletes, and Eagle Scouts who’ve never done wrong or made mistakes. Who believes such nonsense, anyway?

Writeth not with wooden tongue:

Avoid language that is deadening to both ear and soul. These are words that are either meaningless, unpronounceable or just plain ugly. Words such as "utilize, optimize, implement" and "facilitate." They're sure to petrify any sentence.

Turnth off not thy brain: 

The grass is always greener; All's well that ends well. His eyes were bigger than his stomach. These clichés are as fresh as leftovers. If you’ve heard a phrase before, avoid using it. Clichés are a crutch, designed to save you from the hard work of thinking something through. Fire up your brain when writing and give us a fresh edge on an old saw.

Circleth not:

Avoid repeating the same words or phrasing sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. It lulls readers to sleep. Instead, vary your words, phrases and sentences. Short to long, staccato to flowing, allegro to sombre.   

Writeth not with groghead:

“Jam yesterday; jam tomorrow but never jam today.” Such writing makes for wonderful limericks and nursery rhymes. But I’m afraid if you write like this you’ll look a bigger fool than the White Queen who spoke these words in Alice in Wonderland. Watch what your words are saying. Do they make sense or are they Jabberwocky? If you’re not careful you’ll end up writing sentences like the ones below:

“Women are choosing careers that they hope will be sympathetic.”

“The streets are littered with homeless hands.”

“This presumption was fervently in attendance.”

Neither Lewis Carroll nor Ogden Nash wrote these lines, although I bet they would have been happy to claim authorship of any one of them. I'm afraid the authors were some students of an elite private college.

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