Chapter 1 Causes

As societies become intellectually mature, it has been claimed, their writers seem increasingly to replace specific verbs with abstract nouns.

1a. The Committee proposal would provide for biogenetic industry certification of the safety to human health for new substances requested for exemption from Federal rules

1b. The Committee proposes that when the biogenetic industry requests the Agency to exempt new substances from Federal rules, the industry will certify that the substances are safe.

These nouns alone make a style more abstract, but they encourage more abstraction: once a writer expresses actions in nouns, she can then eliminate whatever (usually concrete) agents perform those actions along with those whom the actions affect

These abstract Romance nouns result in a prose that we variously call gummy, turgid, obtuse, prolix, complex, or unreadable.

Chapter 2 Clarity

The First Two Principles of Clear Writing

• The subjects of the sentences name the case of characters,
• the verbs that go with those subjects name the crucial actions those characters are part of.

When your prose feels turgid, abstract, too complex, do two things, First, locate the case of characters and the actions that those characters perform (or are the objects of). If you find that those characters are not subjects and their actions are not verbs, revise so that they are.

Some stylistic Consequences

• You may have been told to write more specifically, more concretely.
• You may have been told to avoid using too many prepositional phrases.
• You may have been told to put your ideas in a logical order
• You may have been told to use connectors to clarify logical relationships
• You may have been told to write short sentences.

Looking for Nominalization

1. When the nominalization follows a verb with little specific meaning, change the nominalization to a verb that can replace the empty verb.

   The police conducted an investigation into the matter.

   The police investigated the matter.

   The committee has no expectation that it will meet the deadline.

   the Committee does not expect to meet the deadline.

2. When the nominalization follows there is or there are, change the nominalization to a verb and fill a new subject:

   There is a need for further study of this program.

   The engineering stuff must study this program further.

   There was considerable erosion of the land from the floods. The floods considerably eroded the land.

3. When the nominalization is the subject of an empty verb, change the nominalization to a verb and find a new subject:

   The intention of the IRS is to audit the records of the program.

   The IRS intends to audit the records of the program.

   Our discussion concerned a tax cut.

   We discussed a tax cut.

4. When you find consecutive nominalizations, turn the first one into verb. Then either leave the second or turn it into a verb in a clause beginning with how or why:

   There was first a review of the evolution of the dorsal fin.

   First, she reviewed the evolution of the dorsal fin.

   First, she reviewed how the dorsal fin evolved.

5. We have to revise more extensively when a nominalization in a subject is linked to a second nominalization in the predicate by a verb or phrase that logically connects them

   Subject: Their cessation of hostilities

   Logical connection: was because of

   Object: their personnel losses.

   To revise such sentences,

   (a) Change abstractions to verbs: cessation -> cease, loss -> lose

   (b) Find Subjects for those verbs: they ceased, they lost

   (c) Link the new clauses with a word that expresses their logical connection. That connection will typically be some kind of causal relationship;

   To express simple cause: because, since, when

   To express conditional cause: if, provided that, so long as

   To contradict expected cause: though, although, unless

   Schematically, we do this:

   Their cessation of hostilities -> they ceased hostilities

   was because of -> because

   their personnel losses -> they lost personnel

Useful Nominalizations

In some cases, nominalizations are useful, even necessary. Don’t revise these.

1. The nominalization is a subject referring to a previous sentence:

   These arguments all depend on a single unproven claim.

   This decision can lead to costly consequences.

2. The nominalization names what would be the object of its verb:

   I do not understand either her meaning or his intention.

This is a bit more compact than, “I do not understand either what she means or what he intends”

1. A succinct nominalization can replace an awkward “The fact that”:

   The fact that I denied what he accused me of impressed the jury.

   My denial of his accusations impressed the jury.

But then, why not

When I **denied** his accusations, I **impressed** the jury.

1. Some nominalizations refer to an often repeated concept.

   Few issues have to divided Americans as abortion on demand.

2. We often use a nominalization after there is/are to introduce a topic that we develop in subsequent sentences

3. And sometimes our topic seems so abstract that we think we can write about it only in nominalizations

Passives and Agents

We can usually make our style more vigorous and direct if we avoid both nominalizations and unnecessary passive verbs.

Choosing between Active and Passive

To choose between the active and passive, we have to answer two questions: First, must our audience know who is performing the action? Second, are we maintaining a logically consistent string of subjects? and third, if the string of subjects is consistent, is it the right string of subjects?

Chapter 3 Cohesion

Managing the Flow of Information

We’ve illustrated two complementary principles of cohesion:

• Put at the beginning of a sentence those ideas that you have already mentioned, referred to, or implied, or concepts that you can reasonably assume your reader is already familiar with, and will readily recognize.
• Put at the end of your sentence the newest, the most surprising, the most significant information: information that you want to stress – perhaps the information that you will expand on in your next sentence.

All of us recognize this principle when a good teacher tries to teach us something new. That teacher will always try to connect something we already know to whatever new we are trying to learn.

Chapter 4 Emphasis

Managing Endings

• Trim the end.

  Sociobiologists are making the provocative claim that our genes largely determine our social behavior in the way we act in situations we find around us every day

  Sociobiologists are making the provocative claim that our genes largely determine our social behavior.

• Shift less important information to the left

  The data that are offered to establish the existence of ESP do not make believers of us for the most part.

  For the most part, the data that are offered to establish the existence of ESP do not make us believers.

• Shift important information to the right.

• Extract and isolate.

Some Syntactic Devices

• There. If you begin too many sentences with “There is” or “There are”, your prose will become flat-footed, lacking movement or energy. But you can open a sentence with there in order to push to the end of that sentence those ideas that the next sentences will build on.

• What. A what sentence throws special emphasis on what follows a linking verb. Compare the emphasis of:

  This country needs a monetary policy that will end the violent fluctuations in money supply, unemployment, and inflation.

  What this country needs is a monetary policy that will end the violent fluctuations in money supply, unemployment, and inflation.

You have to pay for this added emphasis with a few more words, so use the pattern sparingly.

• It. By using it as a fill-in subject, you can shift a long introductory clause that would otherwise have been the subject to a position after the verb:

  That domestic oil prices must eventually rise to the level set by OPEC once seemed inevitable.

  It once seemed inevitable that domestic oil prices must eventually rise to the level set by OPEC.

With this pattern, you simultaneously select and emphasize a topic and throw added weight on the stress. Compare:

In 1933 this country experienced a depression that almost wrecked our democratic system of government.

**It** was in 1933 that this country experienced a depression that almost wrecked our democratic system of government. 

Chapter 6 Coherence II

The final point is not to make every paragraph a work of art. Art may be long, but life is too short. The point is to make these principles work together well enough so that you do not confuse your readers. Readers call writing clear not when it is clear, but when they have no reason to call it unclear.

Chapter 10 Usage

Careful writers use alternative to refer to one of three or more choices.

Whenever we move a preposition before its object, we make the sentence a bit more formal. Compare:

The man with whom I spoke was not the man to whom I had been referred.

The man I spoke with was not the man I had been referred to.