Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
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Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
Style begins with mere fluency, getting something down on paper. And it ends with revising again and again, until you’ve removed all the snares and blemishes.
Deirdre N. McCloskey • Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
Buck up. Irrational cheerfulness is hard to teach but is good to have for any work, of writing or of the soul.
Deirdre N. McCloskey • Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
So What? Answer that question in every sentence, and you will become a great scholar, or a millionaire. Answer it once or twice in a ten-page paper or report, and you’ll write a pretty good one.
Deirdre N. McCloskey • Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
The novelist John Gardner gave some good advice about variety in sentences (Gardner 1983, 104). Become self-conscious, he said, about how much you’re putting into each part. An English sentence has grammatically speaking three parts: subject, verb, object. Thus: subject = “An English sentence”; verb = “has grammatically speaking” (“grammatically sp
... See moreDeirdre N. McCloskey • Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
We are good when speaking to Mom or to a friend, and we commonly write well to them.
Deirdre N. McCloskey • Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
Tone is transmitted by adverbs, those “-ly” words that drive up the emotional pressure of verbs or adjectives. Run your pen through or select and delete each very. Most things aren’t very. Absolutely, purely, and the like are the same. Most things aren’t absolute or pure, and to claim they are gives a falsely emphatic tone.
Deirdre N. McCloskey • Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
Some find it best to choose an implied reader of imagination. Others find it best to choose a real person, such as Richard Sutch or good old Professor Smith or the friend down the hall. It is healthy discipline to be haunted by people with high standards (but with some sympathy for the enterprise) looking over your shoulder in imagination.
Deirdre N. McCloskey • Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
A newspaper editor once gave advice to a cub reporter: “It doesn’t much matter what your first sentence is. It doesn’t even much matter what the second is. But the third damn well better follow from the first and second.” (AB)(CD)(BDE).
Deirdre N. McCloskey • Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
The tone of the writing and much of its clarity depend on choosing and then maintaining an appropriate implied author. You can’t simply “be yourself” when you write,