Words Fail Me (15 page)

Suppose both candidates are windbags whose most recent speeches lasted not quite sixty minutes. You might write that Tweedledum spoke for
barely an hour,
while Tweedledee spoke for
nearly an hour.

Perhaps both support new programs costing just under $2 million. Your candidate's program would cost
less than $2 million.
The other candidate's would cost
almost $2 million
or
upward of $2 million.

Astoundingly, both candidates have changed their positions to fit the polls. Tweedledum is
flexible
or
responsive,
naturally, but Tweedledee
waffles
on the issues.

Both have failed to live up to previous campaign promises. Your guy has
moderated
his expectations, while
the opponent has
fallen short.
Your candidate
acknowledges
a weakness while the other
admits
to one. You get the idea.

Even a change in word order can affect your tone. Let's say both candidates have a history of stiffing their creditors. Tweedledum
may once have declared bankruptcy, but he now practices fiscal responsibility
. Tweedledee
may now practice fiscal responsibility, but he once declared bankruptcy.
Saying the same thing from a different perspective can convey a different tone, subtly or not so subtly.

Politicians, not to mention lobbyists, advertisers, and anyone else trying to persuade, regularly manipulate facts to achieve a particular tone. Is this fair? Well, I'd like to say that the material should decide the tone, not the other way around. But to some extent all writers manipulate the facts, simply by the choices they make in presenting their material.

Unless you have an ax to grind, be as honest as you can with readers. Try to let your tone emerge naturally from your content. When material that's supposed to be straightforward is manipulated to create a certain effect, the writing can sound strained and artificial.

All writing has an attitude. Make sure yours is right for your material.

Indirect writing is a limp handshake with the reader. It's speaking out of the corner of your mouth. It's refusing to look the reader in the eye. It's weak, evasive, and dishonest, and in some fields—business, politics, public relations, advertising—it's a skill that's been elevated to an art.

People say things indirectly for many reasons. Some think a simple idea is more impressive if it sounds complicated. Some express themselves in a convoluted way because they think it's required of them. Some like to sugar-coat unpalatable facts. Some are covering up holes in their arguments. Some don't want to tell the whole truth. Some are timid. And some simply don't know how to be direct.

What do these roundabout writers do instead? They back into their statements, they pile on jargon or obfuscatory words (
obfuscatory
is one), or they use passive verbs. They bob and weave but never land a punch.

Take a simple, direct sentence like
Cyril shot Sir Cedric.
You can't get more up-front than that. It says who did what, and to whom. But a writer who wants to avoid mentioning the guilty party (Cyril's defense attorney, perhaps) might use a passive verb:
Sir Cedric was shot.
Someone who doesn't want to be specific (a police detective, for instance) could use officialese:
Sir Cedric was the victim of a homicide.
The bureaucrat who likes to water things down might use a weak noun instead of a strong verb:
A shooting took place.
And a truly evasive writer could score a hat trick by using all these methods at once:
Sir Cedric's shooting is being treated as a homicide.

Notice how tame and bloodless those sentences sound compared with the original. Sir Cedric was shot, all right, but not by anybody in particular. The culprit, if there is one, has left the building.

The difference between direct and indirect writing is the difference between witnessing the murder and finding the body. Get to know indirect writing when you see it, and root it out of your own work. Now for a closer look at some of the guises indirect writing can take.

A lot of people, among them bureaucrats and academics, are fond of what my grandfather referred to as"two-dollar words." These indirect writers use inflated language—
otherwise known as bureaucratese, officialese, academese, or jargon—to avoid saying something unpleasant, perhaps to make themselves sound important, or to cloak a weak argument in what Churchill called "terminological inexactitude."

You know the old maxim "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"? Evasive writers can usually find a way to say something unpleasant without coming right out with it. They'd rather not say anything, but if forced to make a statement they'll back into it by using officialese.

A spokesman for a toxic-waste refinery says,
Twelve fatalities occurred,
not
Twelve people died.
As your plane sits on the runway, the pilot announces,
We are experiencing difficulty in identifying the cause of the malfunction,
not
We don't know what's wrong.

Jargon is also handy for dressing up a simple idea. A literary critic who likes to put on airs might praise an author's
unique enunciatory modality
instead of her originality. A dogcatcher who wants to sound important might call himself a
canine control coordinator.

Unless you have a good reason to be evasive, avoid officialese. For one thing, when you're fudging you use up more words; that's reason enough to be direct. For another, pompous, bureaucratic writing can make you sound dishonest even when you're not. (You'll find more on jargon in chapter 6.)

A wishy-washy writer uses weak nouns (like
destruction
) instead of strong verbs (like
destroy).
The wimp writes,
The storm resulted in the
destruction
of the building,
instead of
The storm
destroyed
the building.

If you sense something soft and mushy in your writing, check for a verb that's been nouned. There's no better way to blunt the force of a verb. Make it:
Trollope
wrote
the book in six months.
Not:
The
writing
of the book took Trollope six months.
Make it:
Judge Crater
disappeared
mysteriously. Not: Judge Crater's
disappearance
was mysterious.

Wimpy nouns are creeping into all kinds of writing. Don't let them creep into yours.

There's no getting away from anemic writing. We hear it routinely on the evening news. When a big shot in an expensive suit acknowledges that
mistakes
were made
instead of confessing,
I made
mistakes,
he's being indirect. There's no guilty party, just a vacant chair.

That kind of indirect writing—the passive variety—is easy to spot. It reverses the usual order of subject (
I
), verb (
made
), object (
mistakes
), so that we get the object first, elevated to a subject (
mistakes
), followed by a passive verb (
were made
). What's missing is the "real" subject, the responsible party. Pretty neat, huh?

When we state the case directly, we put the blame where it belongs. When we use a passive verb to disguise the true subject, the culprit gets off scot-free. This is why a passive verb can be the next best thing to a lie. Technically you're telling the truth, though backhandedly. But you're concealing an important piece of information: whodunit. (Granted, that's sometimes the intent.)

Some writers, called on to choose between an active verb and a passive, will choose the passive every time. They'll write,
It is believed that...
, instead of saying who believes it, or
He's been called a...
, instead of saying who called him one. Cowards! Maybe a writer who can't or won't identify the real subject shouldn't say anything at all.

Of course, writing backward is not inherently evil. Overboard let us not go. You might have good reason to use a passive verb if (1) you don't want to say who's responsible, (2) you don't know, (3) it's not important, or (4) you're saving a surprise for the end. Some examples:

An irregularity has been brought to my attention.
You'd rather not say who snitched.

Brussels is said to be dull.
You can't cite an authority.

Cyril was handcuffed and led away.
Obviously, the cops put on the cuffs.

Lefty was strangled with his own suspenders.
The weapon is the surprise.

But try not to use passive verbs if you don't need to. There's an element of accountability in an active verb that's often lacking in a passive one. An active verb makes somebody or something responsible for an action. So don't weasel into a sentence from the wrong end. Examine your writing and change passive verbs into active ones where you can. You'll sound more authoritative, less mealy-mouthed. Besides, it's a more responsible way to write.

When you write indirectly—with passive verbs, pompous words, or corkscrew sentences—you turn away from the reader. (Another kind of evasion, the back-door denial, is discussed in chapter 27.) If you have nothing to hide, don't chicken out. When you have something to say, look the reader in the eye and say it.

There's an old gag about a guy who rattles on and on about himself, oblivious of anyone else's existence. "But enough about me," he finally says. "What do
you
think of my hair weave?"

Everybody knows that blowhard, or someone like him. And that may be why many of us find it hard to write in the first person. We cringe at the thought of coming across as vain or boastful, especially if we're self-conscious to begin with. We imagine weary readers drumming their fingers, rolling their eyes, checking the clock, and thinking, "What an ego!"

Meanwhile, just as many of us find it easy, much too easy, to use the first person. We bask in the warmth of our own regard. Our favorite pronouns are
I, me
, and
my
. Hey, there's enough of Number One to go around, isn't there? Why not be generous? Here's looking at
me,
kid.

I used to belong to the first group, the shy ones (no wisecracks, please). I wasn't always the self-assured extrovert you see before you. It took me years to feel comfortable in the first person. In fact, I still get a twinge every once in a while (like now), wondering whether I'm being too
my
-opic.

If you're one of the shy ones, be brave. Give yourself permission to come onstage and write in the first person. It's intimate. It lets you speak to the reader one-on-one. Best of all, the first person lets you write about the subject you know best—you.

If you're writing a memoir, an autobiography, or a letter, you'll naturally want to speak for yourself. And fiction writers, too, as we'll see, quite often choose the first person. But many other kinds of prose—speeches, reports, essays, reviews, to name a few—may lend themselves to the personal touch as well. Some things simply work better in the first person, like this scathing rejection of Proust's
Remembrance of Things Past
:

"I may perhaps be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can't see why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep."

Whether or not you agree with the sentiment, you have to admit that the French editor who wrote it was right to choose the first person. By all means use it when there's a reason—to sharpen a barb, to soften a blow, to take responsibility for a statement, to get personal with the reader.

But if you're hooked on the first person and can't produce a sentence without yourself in it, you have a problem. Don't let the air out of your ego just yet, though. You'll need it later. Step back a few paces. Think of your readers. Do they need your opinion, or can the facts stand on their own? Is your presence helping, or is it an obstacle that readers must navigate around? Be honest. This calls for a cold eye. Since it's always easier to be ruthless with somebody else's writing, be critical as you imagine sitting through this speech:

As I stand here today, I thank you for offering me the grave challenge of addressing this graduating class on the future of our youth in America. I profoundly believe, and history will no doubt bear me out, that the youngsters of today will be the adults of tomorrow. But I ask myself this question: Will there be a tomorrow? I am of the opinion, and I'm sure you will agree with me, that only America's youth can answer my question. As you decide whether to cast your lot with the past or the future, remember the words I have spoken here: The day after today, as I see it, is just another way of saying tomorrow.

Now imagine that same speech, but with less of the speaker in it:

Thank you for offering me the grave challenge of addressing this graduating class on the future of youth in America. History will show that the youngsters of today will be the adults of tomorrow. But will there be a tomorrow? Only America's youth can answer that. As you decide whether to cast your lot with the past or the future, remember that the day after today is just another way of saying tomorrow.

Well, it's still empty twaddle, but at least it's less self-important. One problem at a time. By weeding out unnecessary first-person singulars (
I, me, my, mine, myself
), we let readers know that we're thinking more of them and less of ourselves.

Deciding where you belong—onstage or behind the scenes—isn't always simple. When does a travel article become an ego trip? A modest proposal, an advertisement for
myself
? You may be happy to learn that in many kinds of writing, the decision isn't up to you.