July 1956 — Vol. 37, No. 7 — On Writing Briefly
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One important step toward clear and courteous writing is
described by Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "since
brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and
outward flourishes, I will be brief." But what is brevity?
If a piece of writing tells the whole story, and only that,
it is not too long. Being brief means that you will not use
ten pages to tell a one—page story: but neither will
you try to tell a ten—page story on one side of a sheet
of paper.
A report of three thousand words may be brief, and a 100—word
memo may be long: the first, if it comprehends many facts,
several points of view, and some choices: the latter if it
is devoid of necessary facts, woolly in its thinking, and
indeterminate in its conclusion.
To use too many words to communicate one's thoughts is a
sign of mediocrity, while to gather much thought into few
words, clearly and accurately, stamps the person of executive
genius.
Men in management positions have a special obligation. Sour
notes are not sweetened because the writer dictated them from
an executive's chair to an exquisite secretary.
What you have written may not be bad writing, but the chances
are it is not the most effective plain talk either.
Have you written it too hastily? When you spend an hour
seeking the answer to a correspondent's question or complaint,
isn't it good economy to spend ten minutes expressing your
answer so that it will be understood and appreciated?
When Churchill was directing Britain's war effort he wrote
a memo containing this dictum: It is sheer laziness not compressing
thought into a reasonable space.
Why are you writing?
Before starting to write, you should know just what you
wish to convey. Business men don't ordinarily write with the
sole purpose of self—expression. They want to get other
people to understand, to believe, to act.
A letter may fail of its purpose because of lack of target
definition. The writer scatters his fire. He writes or dictates
many words while wandering around in his mind looking for
explicit thoughts. So one rule for the writer of letters is:
reach a clear and definite agreement with yourself about the
ideas you wish to convey.
You are not writing to be impressive, but to be understood.
There is an obligation upon you to deliver your message in
such a way that it will have the best possible chance to fulfil
its mission. John Ball and Cecil B. Williams illustrate this
in their book called Report Writing (Ronald's Press
Co., New York, 1955): "The quarterback has to throw the ball
where the receiver is, or the pass is not good. The quarterback
can't catch the ball for the end, of course, or make him catch
it - but he can put it in the end's hands. After that it is
up to the end."
The thing needed in writing is to have something to pass
along, and to use words the reader will understand, put up
in packages small enough for him to grasp easily.
Be precise
This is not a list of rules for letter writing, but no essay
can avoid reference to some rules. One necessary prescription
is: be precise.
When your writing is definite in its manner and plain in
its language it is likely to be vivid, so that your words
walk up and down in the mind of your reader. Brevity helps
you to give movement to what you write.
The first virtue of a masculine writing style is brevity,
and brevity is aided by use of the active verb and the concrete
noun. What most appeals to people is life, action, sights
and sounds - something happening. Note how carefully those
exquisite short stories called the parables speak only of
things you can touch and see, and what befalls them.
Your writing will be diffuse and pedestrian so long as you
prefer abstract words to concrete words. But most business
men are not that way at all by nature, so another rule is:
be yourself. Directness and simplicity of expression will
contribute mightily toward natural forcefulness. "One must
still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star,"
said Nietzsche, the German philosopher. The business man will
resolve his chaotic thoughts into exact, concrete and brief
expression.
Be graceful
Brevity is not to be worshipped in a narrow way. The graces
have their place in social correspondence and descriptive
narration. Some irrelevancies should make their way into all
letters designed to win friends. Brevity should be sought
in the spirit of "as briefly as I can, saying what I wish
to say, in the spirit I wish to convey,"
Let our letters have something in them not common and ordinary.
Every letter is entitled to depart from what is dictated by
a strict rule of shortness: a departure that adds a personal
touch in keeping with the purpose and content of the letter.
Your letters can be meaningful and significant and still
be melodious and human and courteous. But it takes art and
effort to do all this without rambling.
What is our ideal? All of us would like to write letters
and reports and articles that have distinction of expression,
brevity, dramatic quality, concreteness, beauty of rhythm
and adventurousness of phrase and idea. We can do it. By paying
attention and observing a few principles we can improve our
writing little by little until one day we awake to the realization
that we have achieved the mystery called "art".
Be clear
Opposed to the grace and concreteness we have been writing
about is what Professor Edgar Dale of Ohio State University
brightly headlines on two of his essays: "The Art of Confusion"
and "Clear Only if Known." It is unwise to send forth your
thoughts like so much raw material for your reader to put
into shape. The expert writer, the thoughtful writer, the
writer who wishes his letter to accomplish something, will
not leave to his reader the labour of disentangling the pertinent
material and reshaping it in his own mind.
What is the first object of a machine? Effective work. The
maker seeks to eliminate friction and tightness and looseness.
The machine that runs with perfect smoothness transmits its
power in production.
What is the first object of writing? To convey thoughts.
The writer seeks to arrange words so that they shall suffer
the least possible obstruction from friction in the reader's
mind.
In both cases the object is to secure the maximum of disposable
force by diminishing the amount absorbed in transmission.
"Obviously," said George Henry Lewes in an essay on style
more than fifty years ago, "if a reader is engaged in extricating
the meaning from a sentence which ought to have reflected
its meaning as in a mirror, the mental energy thus employed
is abstracted from the amount of force which he has to bestow
on the subject."
If your letter deals with products or ideas that are highly
technical, take pains to interpret them simply. Remember that
you are the specialist on the point you are writing about:
your correspondent expects something helpful from you.
This does not mean that you must always write for the 12—year—old
mentality. Do avoid ten—dollar words and do build bridges
between one section of a topic and another. When "boiling
down" your letter, be sure not to demolish the bridges, thus
leaving the reader to flounder between two thoughts. Destroy
confusing ornamentation; trim away the superfluous; remove
images and expressions that are foreign to your train of thought
and your purpose.
John Evelyn, the 17th century diary writer, told the story
of Monmouth's rebellion in 68 lines, and he included all essentials
and colour. Homer condensed ten years of adventure into his
epic Odyssey, and Aristotle made a digest of it in 79 words.
Lincoln's address at Gettysburg used only 266 words. The Ten
Commandments use 297. The United States Declaration of Independence
has 300. By contrast, said Walter Winchell, the United States
columnist, a U.S.A. order to reduce the price of cabbage uses
26,911 words.
Effects of lengthiness
People do not like to read a letter that is lazily long.
They are likely to exclaim at the end, as an old philosopher
did in a great Egyptian temple built for a little black monkey:
"What a magnificent palace is here for such a ridiculous inhabitant!"
It is not good business to have that said of something one
writes. Readers are likely to resent it if you take up their
time by using superfluous words. Your purpose - selling goods,
collecting money, answering criticism, or making friends -
will be better served by letters that are concise, dynamic,
straight—to—the—point, and tell exactly what
your reader wants to know.
Lengthiness can be expensive as well as ineffective. Suppose
you write a memo to 1,000 people, perhaps your employees or
agents. It takes you an hour to block out the memo: it takes
your readers an average of five minutes to read and understand
it. On the other hand, suppose you were to spend two hours
in composing the memo or letter, writing it so simply and
briefly that your readers can absorb it in only four minutes.
You would spend 60 extra minutes and your readers would save
1,000 minutes: a good return in time, temper and friendly
feeling.
Simplicity pays
Great writers try to tell their thoughts as clearly and
shortly as possible. Simplicity has always been a mark of
truth, and we believe that it is now accepted as a mark of
genius.
Simplicity is the outward sign of depth of thought. You
cannot adorn simplicity. You do not achieve it by grammatical
artifice. What will move your reader to your way of thinking
is your sincerity manifesting itself through words that have
human feeling akin to his own, and carry a meaning of interest
to him.
Alas! there are many people who think that if they are dull
enough and laboured enough they will sound scholarly. They
take an ordinary proverb, like "Early to bed and early to
rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise," and they change
it to "Early retirement is a significant factor in one's physical
development, pecuniary success and intellectual stature."
They take an advertising slogan like "Ask the man who owns
one" and turn it into "Make an inquiry of one of our purchasers."
Good style is not reached by such tortuous ways. Confused
talk does not drum up business. Ornamentation wearies the
eye and deadens the mind. The smooth and luscious in a business
communication disgusts us. Every word that can be spared from
the purpose and plan of the letter is hurtful if it remains.
Superlatives should be avoided. They are unnecessary and
often misleading, deceiving not only the reader but the writer.
The latter may be led to think when he writes "I have given
the matter my closest attention" that he really has exhausted
all avenues of approach.
Exaggeration expresses ignorance. We try to replace poverty
of thought or language by the use of bombastic phrases. Our
appeal will be more effective if we write gently, supplying
facts in easily understood form, presenting our purpose in
a charming and eager way.
We must be careful about adjectives, because the evil destiny
of many who aspire to good writing abides in their indiscriminate
use. Those who misuse or over—use adjectives fill their
letters with affectation. They are like the painter who threw
sponges soaked with several colours at a wall, expecting a
beautiful landscape to result.
It is good practice to reserve adjectives for occasions
when they make our meaning more precise, and to reject them
when they merely convey emphasis. Concrete nouns, fittingly
chosen, and active verbs, will usually give the desired strength
and movement to what we write.
Words and sentences
What do you write with? Words, sentences, and paragraphs.
We should take a delight in calling forth the right words,
in the right environment, to say what is in our minds to say.
The best words call up images with little expenditure of
the reader's time and energy. It is a mistake for the business
man to chase after a fine word instead of using the simple
word that fits his needs. He lays himself open to two dangers:
he may be seduced by the charm of some attractive word to
write something he did not intend, or he may be tempted to
seek a situation into which he may fit the word to which he
has taken a liking.
It is obvious by now that brevity in letters does not consist
alone in deleting words as one does in composing a telegram,
but in choosing the right words to convey our meaning clearly
and sharply. By using words that give light and shadow to
our meaning we help ourselves toward writing pithily. If there
are unusual words that express a meaning better than any others,
we should use them. We should not fear long words if they
are strongly expressive and have a familiar look and sound.
Let us cut sentences into bites we can swallow. The man
who wishes to avoid suspicion of being a fuzzy thinker will
prune his high—sounding phrases. Instead of adorning
one thought about his firm or his product or himself in ten
glorious sentences, he will fill ten simple sentences with
ten significant thoughts.
The average length of sentences in five of the most popular
magazines is 18 words. If you write long sentences, look for
joints in their construction where you can break them into
smaller pieces. You will be pleasantly surprised, if you examine
yesterday's carbon copies, to see how simple it is. Look at
all those "and" sentences that can be broken up. We seem to
have a feeling of guilt when we write a short, simple sentence.
Then we tack on "and . . . something or other."
The more words there are in a sentence the harder it is
to read and understand that sentence. A sentence should, ideally,
express only one thought. At the same time, we must try to
have some melodious movement in what we write: we cannot have
our sentences always leaping and never flowing. Too many very
short sentences tire us. We should vary the pattern. Each
sentence should tell a situation which is part of a larger
one, and move us on to the next.
Building our sentences into good paragraphs is an art not
to be despised. We shall not go far wrong if we take for each
paragraph one essential truth about our subject, or one point
of view. By breaking our letters into short lengths in a thoughtful
way we achieve two desirable results: we give our letters
an airy and readable look, and we increase our points of emphasis.
Writing a letter
Your letter will be well written if it fulfils these modest
requirements: if it is effortless in appearance, showing no
sign of strain in its composition; if it is untheatrical,
making its points without needlessly sawing the air; if it
is simple in its construction, making intelligible to the
reader things that might be obscure; if its words fit your
thoughts, not hanging like a giant's clothes on the limbs
of a dwarf nor squeezing a man's frame into the clothes of
a boy; and if all this is attained in the smallest space commensurate
with the clear expression of what you have to say.
Think before writing. Just as perspective is the bridle
and rudder of the artist, so a forward look is the guide of
the writer. You should know your audience and your subject;
you should have a clear conception of what you want your audience
to learn about your subject.
If you do a little exercise in analysis it will help you
to write briefly. Ask yourself: to whom am I writing? what
knowledge has he about this matter, knowledge that I need
not repeat? what is his feeling about it? on what points do
we agree? disagree? what do I wish to add to his knowledge?
what do I wish to influence him to do?
Begin your letter at the point of the reader's interest.
It is discourteous to tackle the reader as if he must read
what you write, and need not be wooed. No one is so wise or
important that he can neglect being urbane.
In the body of your letter, make of the problem or plan
an interesting situation to be told about. What is happening
about that order, payment, delivery? what difference does
it make to your correspondent? You must have something specific
to say or you would not be writing: don't be coy about saying
it. Keep this part of your letter compact, being sure, at
the same time to cover the subject.
Be correct. Brevity is helped by exactness. There are times
for severity of writing, with no frills or puffs, but even
then —— perhaps, indeed, more then than at other
times— you need to be exact in your use of words.
Look it over
If you have been led to believe that your correspondence,
or that of your subordinates, can be improved, beware of seeking
neat solutions. We do not know of any way of handling correspondence
that is at the same time the quickest way and the best way.
Efficiency in results demands some expenditure of time in
preparation.
When you are checking a letter, read it with more than the
discovery of typographical errors in mind. Does it convey
your message to your reader in such a way as to provoke a
favourable response along lines you desire? Does it tell as
briefly as is consistent with courtesy and your strategy just
what you have to say? Have you smothered any important points
by loading them with detail? Have you discarded all unnecessary
ballast? Is there anything in the letter whose presence or
absence makes no discernible difference?
Shakespeare seems to have had a habit of roughing out his
plays pretty large, and then cutting them down. He wrote at
white heat, once the mood was on him. He did not pause at
the end of every passage, to check back on the number of words
he was using. But in the outcome his plays hew closely to
the line of economy, considering not only the matter in them
but the evocation of spirit they were designed to arouse.
Yours may be a similar method: to write at length and then
shorten your manuscript.
Read your letter, too, with an eye to its effect on you.
The discipline of striving for perfection of expression, your
effort to do a good job with an economy of words, will have
a beneficial effect. A sloppy way of writing may give rise
to self—induced murkiness of thought, but strictness
in expression will contribute to a tidy mind.
Appreciate good writing
We should esteem good writing, and show our appreciation.
There is magic in a word of praise.
Why not write, once in a while, to someone who writes you
a letter, just to compliment him? Go into particulars; don't
compliment generally. He probably knows that what he wrote
was pretty good technically. Instead, tell him what it meant
to you, how it gave you a new view—point, solved a problem,
or added to your happiness. As André Maurois once remarked:
"The general did not thank me when I talked to him of his
victories, but his gratitude was unbounded when a lady mentioned
the twinkle in his eye."
Out of your evaluation of others' letters will spring a
new desire for distinction in your own.
It will be easy, then, to choose which comment shall apply
to what you write: Maria's in Love's Labour's Lost -
"The letter is too long by half a mile", or Sam Weller's in
Pickwick Papers - "She'll vish there wos more, and
that's the great art o' letter writin'."
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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