Writing well (for the rest of us): No Grammar. No Rules. Just Common Sense. (3 page)

Sentence
A sentence is a single complete thought.

I hate fish.

The single complete thought is “I hate fish.”

Now, we’ll make it a bigger sentence:

I hate fish
because I break out in a rash.

Still a single thought. Still a sentence. You’re just
explaining it a bit more.

You don’t do this:

I hate fish because I break out in
a rash and all sorts of terrible things happen because I really hate eating
fish and did I tell you about the time I ate a fish and it really turned out
badly?

That’s called a run-on sentence and it is terrible. Write
your thoughts one at a time, each in their own sentence.

A sentence usually has at least two things: something spoken
about and something said about it.

John ran.

John
is being spoken about and
ran
is what is
being said about John.

However, there is such a thing as a one-word sentence,
usually used in fiction or casual writing:

Do you like cats?
Yes!
He hit the ball.
Hard.
Home.
That’s how Kansas felt to her.

Let’s talk about paragraphs
A paragraph is a bigger thought than a sentence but is all one thought.

“I hate fish because I break out in
a rash when I eat it. One time, I was in Hawaii and ate a fish, and I had to
run to the pharmacy to get medication. Let me tell you: I hate fish!”

This is a complete thought on the subject of
“disliking fish.” It’s a bigger thought that just “I hate fish.” But it’s all
the same idea, and that’s a
paragraph
.
It’s all the same big
thought.

Let me show you how it
wouldn’t
be done:

“I hate fish because I break out in
a rash when I eat it. One time I was in Hawaii, and ate a fish, and I had to run
to the pharmacy to get medication. Let me tell you: I hate fish! One day I was
wearing pants and didn’t like the color. So I decided it had something to do
with my dislike of fish. I started only buying pants that were not anywhere
near the color of a fish, but then I came to realize, fish come in every color
imaginable. So now I don’t wear pants!”

Look at what happened: the reader is completely confused,
with two different big thoughts joined together. First, it’s about hating fish,
and then, there’s this whole separate idea about pants.

If I had just split the ideas out into two paragraphs,
it would have made sense.

I recommend keeping your paragraphs short.
Long paragraphs are boring and difficult to follow. Ideally, keep your
sentences short as well.

Put a space between your paragraphs
This seems like something very simple, but in emails, I often see
paragraphs written without any spaces between them. Just press the big Enter
key on your keyboard to make one, nice, fat space between the paragraphs.

Clauses
 (stay with me here)
You can skip this part, but you might find it helpful.

Simple sentences are good, but sometimes they can be a bit
boring. So, we might want to make them more interesting by adding more.

To do this, we join groups of words that are each
“mini-sentences.” into one sentence to make a more complex, richer thought.

Each of these groups of words is called a clause.
Clause comes from a Latin word meaning “a brief statement.”

Clauses are a source of considerable confusion for people,
and that’s not their fault. It’s been made very confusing.

I’m going to try and make it very simple: There are two main
types of clauses – those which express their own complete thought, and those
which rely on another clause.

Clauses that express their own complete thought are called
independent
clauses
. Clauses which rely on another clause are called
dependent
clauses
.

Let’s start with a simple sentence:

I love cats.

That is a complete thought, but you want to say a bit more.
So you add “because they are so cuddly.”

I love cats
because
they are so cuddly.

“Because they are so cuddly” depends on the other clause. It
can’t stand on its own. It’s a
dependent
clause.

Let’s go back to a simple sentence:

I love bicycles.

In this case, you want to add that you
dislike
motorcycles.
So you add “I dislike motorcycles”:

I love bicycles,
but
I dislike motorcycles.

These are two independent thoughts, each
independent
clauses. They can stand on their own. To make the writing understandable, they
are joined by a conjunction, a word that joins clauses (the word
but
).

That’s it. End of lesson. If you want to study more about
clauses, get a good grammar book. But I do not want to kill you with this
information. I want you to live.

Good
writing is:

·
        
Pure

·
        
Clear

·
        
Precise

Pure
means that the writing is in
just
correct
English, without anything else added.

Pure writing doesn’t include:

·
        
foreign language words

·
        
unnecessary technical words

·
        
old, unused words

·
        
slang

Clear
means writing that uses normal, simple words and
does everything possible to avoid confusion. Words are not used that might be
misunderstood to mean something else. Clear writing also does not show off or
use complicated terms that no one understands.

Precise
means writing that intends to have the reader
completely understand what is being communicated
with as few words as possible.
Precise writing has the goal of getting something immediately understood by the
reader.
It is writing that doesn’t use long, boring sentences. It
doesn’t overuse words. However, it is not so short as to be baffling.

The best writers
The best writers have something they want to say, and they want the reader
to actually get it.

It is not a sign of intelligence to use big words and long
sentences. Sometimes, it’s a sign of being a jerk.

There is a word to describe someone who shows off, is dull
and highly academic:
Pedant
.

That’s probably the most complicated word in this book. I
only mention it so that you know how to call someone who writes like they have
mothballs stuck in their mind, who writes to show off and who is incredibly
wordy to the point of being totally uninteresting.

Just because someone uses big words does not mean they are
smart.

Don’t worry about looking dumb by writing simply. Great
writers write simply.

I have a large vocabulary – larger than most people. But I
go out of my way to choose simpler words in my writing.   

Paula LaRocque, a teacher who wrote a well-known (and
excellent) book on writing, used to have her students write as much as they
could in 10 minutes. Just… go!
Because of the time pressure, she found that the writers all used simple words.
But what surprised her even more was that the writing was excellent!

It was only when the students tried to “write well” that
their writing became boring and dense.

Interesting.

Also, realize people are not as educated as they once
were.
It’s important to understand that no matter how smart
you
are,
the majority of the population is actually very poorly educated. And I include some
college-educated people in this statement as well. I remember being in a
college writing course where I was surprised at the lack of education of fellow
students.

If you’re involved in any form of teaching, you will agree:
what was acceptable in the past as an elementary school education is now taught
in college. If you don’t believe me, search online for “8
^th
-grade
tests from the 1800s.” The level of education of even poor country kids was
better than what “smart” city kids get these days.

You will lose any reader if you try to get fancy.

Don’t write to seem smart. Write to get your point across.
Generally, a good rule is to keep your words at the vocabulary level of a
15-year-old and you’ll be safe.

Write to be understood. Write with simple words.

Get your words right
There is a bizarre idea in education that one “figures out the meaning of a
word by its context.” There are many smart teachers who give this terrible
advice.

This thinking leads to major errors.

Look at the following sentence:

He was so
noisome
.
We hated him being around us.

What do you think the word “noisome” means? Looking at the
context and thinking about it a bit, you might think that “noisome” means
“noisy.”

So then you decide to sound cool, and you write something
like this:

The neighbors were
upset because I was
noisome
.

You just got trapped by the “figure the word out by its
context.” You just wrote that you smell terrible. Noisome means
smelly
!

These kinds of mistakes happen quite often. 

Do a lot with a little
A good writer packs a punch, writing with as few words as possible, to get
the most information to the reader in the shortest sentence possible.

Look at the difference in these two sentences:

She was so incredibly stunning, so
beautiful and wonderful to look at that all men were crazy about her and would
constantly bother her. When she would go out, men were constantly asking for
her number and she would just ignore them.

Here is the same idea, but shorter, with more punch:

Her beauty drove men crazy. When she
went out, men would ask for her number, only to be ignored.

Look at this boring sentence:

Bill went scuba diving in Aruba
last January, but he wasn’t able to see all the sights that he wanted to, so
instead he went back in March to dive more to see what he had missed, and was
able to complete all of his diving satisfactorily.

Grammatically, it’s fine. But what a completely boring
sentence! I can’t teach this because it’s common sense. When you write
something, look to how you can remove anything that’s not necessary. It’s a
discipline that is learned.

Here’s the same sentence, re-written:

Bill went scuba diving in Aruba
last January but missed some areas, so he went back in March and completed all
of his dives.

Start with the main idea first
Generally, write your sentences starting with the main idea. Then add more
information to your first sentence.

France in the summer is a beautiful
place to visit. The countryside is beautiful, with rolling hills, pleasant
fields, lazy rivers and carefree living. Best of all, you’ll enjoy incredible
food and wine, as you journey through a country that values quality of life
over anything else.

There is another style of writing, where you
end
with
the main idea:

A beautiful countryside with
rolling hills, pleasant fields, lazy rivers and carefree living, where one
enjoys incredible food and wine while journeying through a country that values
quality of life over anything else. France in the summer is a beautiful place
to visit.

Do you see the difference? The first example is simply
easier to follow. The second style is fine, but better used in creative or informal
writing. In normal everyday writing, it’s hard to follow

A tip to give your writing laser focus
Ask yourself this question when starting out a writing assignment.

1.
      
What is the piece of writing about?

2.
      
What is this piece of writing
really
about?

Example:

1.
      
This book is about how to become a better writer.

2.
      
This book is about how to avoid common mistakes in everyday writing so
you can be successful . 

The first question is weak and general. The second question gets
down to specifics. It’s a useful tool that you can try yourself
[1]
.

Use subheads
Subheads – the boldface introductions to paragraphs like you see in this book –
are used because they work. In a fast-paced world, readers skim rapidly through
most writing, scanning the subheads. Make them informative on their own, so the
reader can quickly pick up what’s being discussed just from the subhead.

Writing longer pieces
Thinking logically is key in all writing.

It starts with a sentence, itself a complete thought.
Sentences are put into paragraphs, which are themselves bigger thoughts. Then a
longer piece of writing, such as an essay, is one really big thought.

A common practice for longer pieces is to state the overall
idea that you’re going to discuss in the first paragraph, and then expand on it
as you go further down. It’s tidy and neat. Logical. You don’t ramble on and
on, putting in “oh, and there’s this other thing I meant to say” halfway
through the document. It shows a scattered, disorganized mind.

A similar and often-used writing style is called the
“inverted pyramid.” This style is where you get all the key pieces of
information in the first paragraph, and then the less important points further
down. This is the style used by reporters and is useful in writing things like newspaper
articles.

Vary your sentence length.
Don’t let all of your sentences be the same length. A good sentence length
is 15-20 words long. However, you should use both longer sentences and shorter
sentences to create a rhythm in your writing.

Sentence fragments
This part sounds complicated, but it’s common sense.

Research show that children do
better learning music at a young age. For example a 15% increase in IQ.

Look at that last sentence. It’s a fragment – something just
sitting there, not joined to anything. It’s confusing.

Instead, just restructure your sentence to make it clearer:

Research shows that children do
better in life when they learn music at a young age. For example, one study
showed a 15% increase in IQ for children who studied music at a young age
versus those who studied no music at all.

Babbling
One error I see quite a lot
is weird sentences that just kind of
babble, just using a comma:

She is really nice, she is always
doing good things for the poor.
He wrote the book, he found himself wildly successful.

What’s happening is that there are two “mini-sentences”
making up the sentence (these “mini-sentences” are called independent clauses). 

When you’re joining parts of a sentence like this, use words
such as:
and, but, for, yet, nor, so, after, although, before, unless, as,
because, even though, if, since, until, when, while, however, moreover, on the
other hand, nevertheless, instead, also, therefore, consequently, otherwise,
and
as a result.

She is really nice, and as a
result, is always doing good things for the poor.

He wrote the book, and
consequently, found himself wildly successful.

You can also use a semi-colon (;), which is really a way to
join two sentences; it’s very useful.

Get active
Verbs have “voice.” a fancy word that means that the verb shows whether the
subject is giving or receiving action. 

Active voice verbs show
giving
action, passive voice
verbs show
receiving
action. 

Active

Tom
hit
the ball
She kicked
the wall
The car
damaged
the bike.

Passive

The ball
was hit
.
The wall
was kicked
.
The bike
was damaged
.

You don’t even need to know grammar to understand passive
versus active voice. You can “feel” it in the writing.  Get the idea of something
doing
something, and you’ve understood active voice.

You can easily change a sentence to active voice:

Passive
The book
was written
by Mary Jones.

Active
Mary Jones
wrote
the book.

Active words make the writing come alive. It’s a secret to
powerful writing. Marketers use it to sell. And you can use it to make your
writing livelier and clearer.

Now, some people love to use passive voice to disguise
something that’s their fault:

       “The bridge was blown up,” said the general.

No one is taking responsibility for the bridge being blown
up – especially that general. (You can, of course, use this trick yourself!)

Prepositions
Don’t overuse prepositions. In fact, try to keep them to a minimum. You can
sometimes remove them completely.

Look at the following sentence:

       The car was driving
at
an incredibly fast
pace.

Well, just get rid of the preposition and tighten up the
sentence:

       The car was driving incredibly fast.

Use bullet points
Bullet points are a valuable tool to create effective, clear writing.

Look at this paragraph:

It’s simple to have satisfied
customers. You only need to create a great product, deliver great service,
communicate regularly, and ask customers for advice on how to improve.

It’s not a very easy sentence to read. So, you could use
bullet points to make it clearer.

It’s simple to have satisfied
customers. You only need to:

·
        
create a great product,

·
        
deliver great service,

·
        
communicate regularly and

·
        
ask for advice on how to improve.

Here are some pointers to keep in mind when writing bullet
points:

·
        
Keep them simple and uncluttered. Don't use sub-bullet points and
sub-categories.

·
        
Keep them each roughly the same length as the rest, so that they
are neat and orderly.

·
        
Start them each with the same part of speech.  Don’t, for
example, start one with a verb and then use a noun to start the next one. 

Also, good bullet points don't each need to be a complete
sentence, but they should be consistent with each other. In other words, make
each bullet point a complete sentence, or make each one an incomplete sentence
– but at least make them all the same way.