Imagine science writing as an upside-down pyramid. Start at the bottom with the one fact a reader must know before he can learn any more. The second sentence broadens what was stated first, making the pyramid wider, and the third sentence broadens the second, so that you can gradually move beyond fact into significance and speculation—how a new

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.

The man or woman snoozing in a chair with a magazine or a book is a person who was being given too much unnecessary trouble by the writer.

Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.

As for the area where our Usage Panel was conservative, we upheld most of the classic distinctions in grammar—“can” and “may,” “fewer” and “less,” “eldest” and “oldest,” etc.—and decried the classic errors, insisting that “flout” still doesn’t mean “flaunt,” no matter how many writers flaunt their ignorance by flouting the rule, and that

Therefore ask yourself some basic questions before you start. For example: “In what capacity am I going to address the reader?” (Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?) “What pronoun and tense am I going to use?” “What style?” (Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Personal and casual?) “What attitude am I going to take

A high proportion of “which” usages narrowly describe, or identify, or locate, or explain, or otherwise qualify the phrase that preceded the comma:

Always look for ways to convey your information in narrative form.

some of the most powerful tools they possess—for good and for bad—are words.