The Mighty Word's Guide to Good Writing
Part Three - Simplicity
Whether you are describing a scene in a story or laying out your argument in an essay, placing sentences alongside each other – and clauses alongside each other with each sentence – in a clearly comprehensible way is essential. How much information should you place within a single sentence? What goes where, what comes first and what follows?
To get you started, here is a first principle. It is a solid foundation for all writers and is worth returning to over and over again:
The short, simple sentence is best.
Whatever you are writing, begin with this guiding principle. Check in with it regularly. Ask yourself: have I stated my ideas in the simplest, most direct way possible? If you can answer in the affirmative, then you are on the right path to an economical, communicative and effective text. Where you answer in the negative, stop and reflect: does the complexity of the sentence communicate a thought that cannot be expressed in a simpler way? Is it necessary to construct a longer, more sophisticated sentence in order to convey the intended message? It may well be that this is absolutely the case, and in this scenario you are right to compose a longer sentence containing multiple clauses. But if you can, in all honesty, see that one or more simple sentences will say the same thing, then the simple route is always the right route. This will keep your reader fresh and will deliver coherent, comprehensible packets of information that don’t run the risk of being misunderstood or mistaken by a reader who loses focus or who can’t remember the beginning of a long sentence by the time they get to the end.
So, the rule is: simple is beautiful.
Add this to the rule, and you have the solid foundation of all good writing: a longer sentence may be the correct choice, but ensuring this in its simplest form as well will maintain effective and clear use of language.
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Some writing is highly ornate, artistic or allusive. Some is intellectual and abstract; some is informal; some is rational and businesslike. The best examples of all of these will have one thing in common: they will use the clearest, simplest forms necessary to get their message across. That means their use of the sentence will match the needs of their content. In fact, these two things will be fused: ‘meaning and ‘execution’ will become one.
Coming next – Part Four: A clean break: the power of the full stop.
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