Simple, Brief, and Precise: How to Write with Clarity

By Darrel Walters

This book is a straightforward, practical, easy-to-use tool to improve writing. Author Darrel Walters draws from his experience reading tens of thousands of pages as a university professor to create an essential reference and guide. Simple, Brief, and Precise is destined to become a highly valued companion to anyone aiming to make better use of the English language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: May 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781622776702

Book preview

Front Cover of Simple, Brief, and Precise

Additional Praise for Simple, Brief, and Precise

Darrel Walters has accompanied my academic writing adventures with his expert guidance for over 30 years. By habitually practicing the writing techniques in Simple, Brief, and Precise, you will find his guidance accompanies your adventures, too, contributing to enjoyment while you write, edit, and read your final copy. Best of all, your readers will reap the benefits of your efforts, as they will enjoy engaging in your writing with the utmost interest and ease.

—Alison Reynolds, PhD, Professor of Music Education, Temple University

Simple, Brief, and Precise has been a required textbook for our graduate students. Students find the writing easy to follow. That makes it a practical model for them. The examples of correct and incorrect language use and writing practices are particularly useful tools. I still use Walters’ book as a personal style guide!

—Warren Haston, PhD, University of Hartford’s Hartt School

Book Title of Simple, Brief, and Precise

SIMPLE, BRIEF, AND PRECISE

How to Write with Clarity

DARREL WALTERS

Third Revision

G-10499

ISBN: 978-1-62277-595-8

Copyright © 2021 GIA Publications, Inc.

7404 South Mason Avenue

Chicago, IL 60638

www.giamusic.com

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest.

- Bertrand Russell

Each species has a skill that distinguishes it. Birds fly. Fish swim. People think and use language.

Our species-specific gift makes language indispensable to effective human interaction. Language skills correlate highly with success in creating academic and professional documents, exploring possibilities, promoting ideas, collaborating with others, and—in general—conducting business of any kind. For that reason, any institution or business beset by individual failures to write effectively will be crippled by misunderstandings, errors, senseless inquiries, and wrong turns—and ultimately by the personal and financial losses that those entanglements generate.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Thoughts About Using This Book (with Study Planner)

1. Some Principles to Guide Your Writing

Simplicity

2. Let Simple Words Dominate

3. Highlight Actions and Actors

Use Active Verbs

Use Active Voice

Keep People Visible

4. Give Readers a Clear Path

Be Consistent

Avoid Overstatement

Avoid Understatement

Avoid Jargon

Use Positive Form

Use Parallel Form

Say Something

Brevity

5. Make Words Earn Their Space

Avoid Filler

Avoid Redundancy

6. Monitor Sentence Length

Make Smaller Sentences

Use Markers

Use Punctuation

Draw a Picture

Precision

7. Choose Words Precisely

Choose Specific Terms Over General

Respect Shades of Meaning

Be Wary of Word Popularity

8. Place Words Precisely

Keep the Modifier and the Modified Together

Follow an Action Phrase with the Action’s Subject

Orient Readers with Word Placement

Emphasize Material with Word Placement

Grammar

9. Learn Basic Grammar

Parts of Speech

Parts of a Sentence

Types of Clauses and Phrases

Incorrect Word Choice

Subject/Verb Disagreement

Wrong Verb Tense

Dangling Participle

Split Infinitive

Careless Use of Prepositions

Wrong Pronoun Case

Antecedent/Pronoun Disagreement

10. Speak Well to Write Well

Is Like Dying an Untimely Death?

11. Accommodate Gender Elegantly

Background

Problem

Avoiding the Problem

Punctuation

12. Use the Common Punctuation Marks Well

Sentence Enders (period, question mark, exclamation point)

Signs of Ownership and Emphasis (apostrophe, quotation marks)

Joiners (apostrophe, hyphen)

The Comma Coma

Use a Comma to Separate Independent Clauses Joined by a Conjunction

Use a Comma to Set Off an Introductory Word, Phrase, or Clause

Use Commas to Set Off Words That Interrupt the Flow of a Sentence

Use a Comma to Set Off a Nonrestrictive Clause

Use Commas to Mark a Series

13. Expand Your Punctuation World

Interruptions (parentheses, dashes)

Relationships (semicolon, colon)

Specialty Items (slash, brackets, ellipsis)

Writing as a Process

14. Prepare Yourself

Identify Your Audience and Your Purpose

Gather Materials

Accuracy

Sufficiency

Interest

Organize Materials

Establish a Timetable

15. Embrace the Act of Writing

Write an Inviting Opening

Give Order to Paragraphs and Sections

Unity

Sequence

Cohesiveness

Acquire a Feel for Writing

Recognize the Stages of Writing

Acknowledge Perspiration and Inspiration

Think on Your Seat

Be Sincere

Make an Impressionable Exit

16. Revise and Reflect

Have a Perspective on Revision

Revise As You Write

Revise After You Write

Solicit a Fresh Perspective

Reflect on Your Work and Its Meaning to You

Protect Reader Comfort

Protect Your Reputation and Acknowledge Your Responsibility

Reap Your Rewards

Bibliography

Appendix A: A Collection of Useful Verbs

Appendix B: A List of Troublesome Words

Appendix C: Four Business Buzzwords Elaborated Upon

Appendix D: A Workbook of Exercises

Workbook Contents

Writing Exercises

Solutions to Writing Exercises

Personal Dictionary

LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 2

1.Some Examples of Complex Words and Simple Counterparts

Chapter 5

1.A Few Common Filler Words and Phrases

2.A Few Common Redundancies

Chapter 9

1.Seven Parts of Speech Defined and Exemplified

2.The Basic Parts of a Sentence

3.Additional Elements of a Sentence

4.Phrases and Clauses Functioning as Parts of Speech

5.Verb Tenses Exemplified

6.Personal Pronouns Shown by Person, Case, and Number

7.Examples of Pronouns and Their Antecedents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to friends, colleagues, and students from various businesses and universities with whom I have worked and from whom I have learned, and especially to those who took time to read Simple, Brief, and Precise in manuscript form and offer helpful comments. Thanks are due especially to Richard Grunow and Christopher Azzara, and to the faculty and students at Eastman School of Music. Two other persons were invaluable in the final stages of preparation. Kerry Green swept the final manuscript for cleanliness, and Laura Bauder formatted it.

The late Marcella O’Connor, an English teacher from Muskegon, Michigan, has played a greater role in my writing than anyone can know. She insisted long ago that I respect the art of language and perpetually elevate my use of it. The force of her will and the power of her lessons lit my path. During our last conversation, when she was just short of her 101st birthday, she continued to inspire me—as she does even now, more than 20 years after her passing.

For years of support and forbearance, I am especially grateful to the love of my life, Carol Walters, and to my daughters. All large projects have a way of spilling energy and sacrifice into the lives of loved ones—energy and sacrifice that I acknowledge and appreciate.

INTRODUCTION

In a 1970 cartoon, Pogo the Possum looked at a forest strewn with trash that shouldn’t have been there. He paraphrased Commander Perry’s classic military message: We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Today we struggle through page after page of difficult-to-read writing strewn with material that shouldn’t be there. We waste time with its density and lack of clarity. It runs us in circles and raises more questions than it answers. Like the trash in Pogo’s forest, the trash strewn throughout pages of writing is not just there. We put it there. We throw hurdles in each other’s way with one writing flaw after another. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Seldom is the problem laziness, nor is it insensitivity toward readers. Rarely do any of us think I’ll just throw words out there and let the next person worry about what they mean. Still, we find ourselves wasting time with each other’s confusing, drudgery-laden writing. Then we spend more time by telephone, e-mail, or text, asking What did you mean by…? The only reason two persons who know and use the same language should ever have to ask what do you mean is if the language is used less than well.

We’ve had help getting into this fix. A few generations ago nearly all teachers of all subjects railed against poor uses of English and insisted on well-written papers. Then the rarified air of post-World War II spawned the cool generation of the 1960s. Criticism that had been seen as helpful to students was seen by many as hurtful. Whole school systems subscribed to a make-them-feel-good approach. Great numbers of teachers yielded to pressures to be less uptight—to protect students’ self-esteem. Many good teachers fought the trend (some still are), but eventually most of the old guard retired. The subliminal message to impressionable students was that using language well is not particularly important. Language skills withered.

Inattentiveness to language now has become a habit for many, compounded by impaired skill due to lessons not learned. We torture each other with the fallout. That doesn’t have to continue. Much of what’s needed to stem the tide is specific and learnable. By becoming more skillful and more attentive in the use of language, students will produce superior work and businesspersons will restore efficiency to communications and momentum to the business day. Two jobs need to be done to make that a reality:

1.Identify specific writing tendencies that make reading difficult.

2.Care passionately about not only what is written, but also how it is written.

I’ll take care of the first job: that is the target of this book. The second job is yours. If you and I join forces, you can begin almost immediately to write with an eye toward efficient reading—toward communicating in a way that lets others take your message in quickly and accurately. That will allow your readers to get on with their work, clear-headed and confident. The efficient reading you make possible for others will raise the level of productivity around you, and your reputation for clarity will serve you well both professionally and personally.

On the cover of this book you saw an overview of the solutions I propose: if writing is to be read quickly and understood thoroughly, it needs to be simple, brief, and precise. Of course that’s only a skeleton. The details of how to accomplish those virtues lie within.

I hope you use Simple, Brief, and Precise (and one of my writing seminars if you’re so inclined) to reduce the prevalence of dense, unclear writing in your environment. I hope also that your business, institution, or school—by having large numbers of writers seeking simplicity, brevity, and precision—will reap the increased productivity that comes with clear written communication.

Darrel Walters

Ft. Washington, Pennsylvania

THOUGHTS ABOUT USING THIS BOOK

Simple, Brief, and Precise is designed to be an accessible writing guide for business professionals and students, with particularly keen appropriateness for graduate students. Chapters are short, principles concise, and examples and figures uncomplicated. Content stems from writing flaws seen in tens of thousands of pages of editing and advising. You’ll find it to be a friendly and helpful writing companion exactly as it is, but a few preparatory tips will help you extend and enhance your study.

1.Read Chapter 10 to reinforce the importance of attitude toward language.

2.Think of the book’s last section, Writing as a Process, as The Big Picture. Whether you read that first or last is a matter of personal preference.

3.Scan columns of verbs in Appendix A sparingly to avoid overload.

4.Leaf through Appendix B, beginning on page 154. Mark words that strike you as personally troublesome, and study a few of them periodically when small bits of time permit.

5.To check your progress as you proceed through Simple, Brief, and Precise, make use of the WORKBOOK housed in Appendix D. It amounts to a collection of writing exercises and solutions designed to seal in learning as you complete corresponding chapters or sections of chapters. Read the introductory material on page 202 before you begin to use the exercises.

6.Use the study planner on the next page if you want to proceed through the book systematically in the manner of a self-directed writing course.

The first session in the study planner (longer than the others) is important to your gaining an overview of the book. The other 17 sessions are somewhat equivalent in length. The order shown below is as good as any, and it has some merit because of occasional references back to previous chapters. In reality, though, sequence is not critically important after Session 1. Do use exercises from Appendix D as directed throughout the text to inventory and strengthen your learning as you proceed.

Study Planner

CHAPTER 1

SOME PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE YOUR WRITING

This nine-page chapter, a kind of annotated table of contents, offers a quick preview of the book—a feel for its essence. Read this chapter lightly for now. It is too content-rich for you to digest fully before you read the book itself. You’ll find it most vivid and useful later as a review.

Inside the back cover you’ll see a simple list of these principles for handy reference. To make the list still handier, photocopy that page on card stock and trim the margins. You’ll have a bookmark that keeps the principles in front of your eye at every turn of the page.

These writing principles are numbered and listed in the order you’ll read about them. Because the body of the book begins with the issues of simplicity, brevity, and precision, some basic principles (grammar and punctuation) that might be presented up front in a prioritized list appear later in this list.

1. Let simple words dominate (pp. 11–16).

Resist temptations to create intellectual effects with unnecessarily complex words. Complex words will dazzle a few readers: His pedagogy was fraught with insipidness. Simple words will communicate with many: As a teacher, he was a bore.

2. Use active verbs (pp. 17–19).

Some words are equally strong as a noun or a verb (light; shovel); others are strong only as a noun, but they are commonly pressed into service as a verb (dialogue; impact). Long-term use of nouns as verbs does force legitimate language shifts over time. Impact, for example, has made substantial movement in that direction (inadvisable as I believe that to be). Your writing will be strongest in the here and now if you choose well-established verbs that describe actions or thoughts specifically. (See Appendix A, A Collection of Useful Verbs.) In that same spirit, avoid nominalizing the action of a sentence.

3. Use active voice (pp. 19–20).

Use passive voice sparingly and purposefully. Rare circumstances make passive voice preferable, but generally X created Y is stronger than Y was created by X. Weakest of all is passive voice with an indefinite actor: Y has been created.

4. Keep people visible (pp. 20–21).

Your readers will want to know who is responsible for what. Avoid personification—attributing an action or thought that requires human will to an inanimate object.

People like to read about other people—about what they are thinking and doing, and how they are interacting. In addition to avoiding personification, be intentional about referring to people in your writing—individually or in groups, by name or position, with nouns or pronouns—so readers can make a personal connection with them. Quotations add still more people power.

5. Be consistent (p. 22–23).

You risk losing readers when you use multiple terms to refer to a single entity, for example, employees, workers, colleagues. Construct a logical system of terms, and then use those terms consistently throughout your document. Also be consistent in format: don’t vary the capitalization pattern or font size of section headings, the underlining or italicizing of a particular kind of term, or the sizes of margins and indentations.

6. Avoid overstatement (p. 23).

You endanger your credibility with readers if you write dogma,

or if you inflate descriptions,

or if you overuse qualifiers,

7. Avoid understatement (p. 23).

You undermine your own ability to communicate strongly and effectively if you lean on hedge words.

8. Avoid jargon (pp. 23–24).

Jargon (shoptalk and colloquialisms) alienates readers from outside your immediate environment, especially readers who speak English as a second language. It also reduces the shelf life of your writing. Jargon is fleeting; Standard English lasts.

9. Use positive form (p. 24).

To know what is not is a lesser form of knowing than to know what is. Negatively written statements, like inside-out socks, become useful only after someone has turned them. Don’t give that job to your readers.

10. Use parallel form (pp. 25–27).

Parallel form—between paragraphs, sentences, parts of sentences, and even words—speeds comprehension. If you were to write the second sentence below rather than the first, you’d smooth the way for your readers.

A common byproduct of parallel form is word reduction.

11. Avoid filler (pp. 29–32).

Filler words and phrases such as in the event that in place of if, or on a daily basis in place of daily, probably crept into your writing when teachers began assigning papers of prescribed lengths. Your immediate concern was not what to write, but rather how to fill pages with words. To write maturely, you need to adopt the slogan fewer words as a beacon that lights your way through each sentence and paragraph. Revise with an eye to brevity, clarity, and overall ease of reading, and believe fervently in this simple truth: skilled writers use fewer words than unskilled writers.

12. Avoid redundancy (pp. 32–35).

Eliminate words that duplicate what you’ve either written or implied elsewhere. Also eliminate words redundant to common knowledge: past history and improve in the future are redundancies because all history resides in the past, and the only place one can improve is in the future.

13. Monitor sentence length (pp. 36–40).

Expect readability to suffer proportionally as your average sentence length exceeds 20 words. A good target range for average sentence length is 16–20 words.

14. Vary sentence length (p. 36).

A sea of similar length, similarly constructed sentences dulls the senses of your readers and makes them less alert to what you have to say. Vary sentence length, and give readers an occasional gift—a sentence containing maybe 2–5 words.

15. Choose specific terms over general (pp. 42–45).

General terms give readers hints; specific terms give them information. Unless you have a good reason for limiting your readers to hints, give them information.

16. Respect shades of meaning (pp. 45–47).

Search diligently for the most effective terms. Expand your vocabulary constantly and be sensitive to fine shades of meaning. Little words—conjunctions and prepositions—are no exception. As bridges between words or word groups, they must be precise to convey an accurate sense of the relationship between the words they join.

17. Be wary of word popularity (p. 48).

New words and new word uses pop up periodically and spread quickly among persons easily drawn to fads. Resist them. There’s no substitute for Standard English if you want to communicate precisely and effectively.

18. Keep the modifier and the modified together (pp. 49–52).

A modifier is a word that qualifies another word or word group. I only saw her once implies that only modifies saw. In reality, only modifies once. For maximum strength and minimum confusion, put the modifier