![]() I have not solved your problem, I've simply restated it. "There are so many ways of being clear! So many different audiences to be clear to! When I tell you to 'Be clear!' I am simply telling you to 'Succeed,' 'Get the message across.' Again, good advice but not much real help. Williams, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. Written deliberately or carelessly, it is a language of exclusion that a diverse and democratic society cannot tolerate." When we read that kind of writing in government regulations, we call it bureaucratese. "It is a problem that has afflicted generations of writers who, instead of communicating their ideas in clear and direct language, hide them not only from their readers, but sometimes even from themselves. But once we've formulated our claims, organized their supporting reasons logically, and grounded those reasons on sound evidence, we still have to express it all in clear and coherent language, a difficult task for most writers, and a daunting one for many. We bewilder our readers when we can't organize complex ideas coherently, and we cannot hope for their assent when we ignore their reasonable questions and objections. "Of course, writing fails for reasons more serious than unclear sentences. "It's good to write clearly, and anyone can. (Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd, "The Best Beginning: Clarity." The Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2013) The image that calls attention to itself is often the image you can do without." Skill, talent, inventiveness, all can become overbearing and intrusive. It's one thing for the reader to take pleasure in the writer's achievements, another when the writer's own pleasure is apparent. "For many other writers, clarity simply falls victim to a desire to achieve other things, to dazzle with style or to bombard with information. ![]() "One who did was the wonderful-though-not-to-be-imitated Gertrude Stein: 'My writing is clear as mud, but mud settles and clear streams run on and disappear.' Oddly, it's one of the clearest sentences she ever wrote. ![]() Some writers seem to resist clarity, even to write confusingly on purpose. Clarity isn't an exciting virtue, but it's a virtue always, and especially at the beginning of a piece of prose. A sensible line threads through the prose things follow one another with literal logic or with the logic of feeling. "Meek or bold, a good beginning achieves clarity. (Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures. "For any kind of public speaking, as for any kind of literary communication, clarity is the highest beauty.".And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them." "It is bad manners to give needless trouble."The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can.Williams in Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 1981) "All men are really attracted by the beauty of plain speech write in a florid style in imitation of this.".If they have to invest too much effort in figuring out the writer's meaning, they will give up in dismay or annoyance." "When asked what qualities they value most in writing, people who must read a great deal professionally put clarity at the top of their list.
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