Ben Writing

Principles for Writing Clearly

Principles for writing clearly and coherently from a book Style - The Basics of Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams & Joseph Bizup.

You can use it in daily basis or ask LLM to rewrite the content.

The Principles for Writing Clearly

  1. Open your sentences with short, concrete subjects that name the characters in your story.
  2. Use specific verbs to name their important actions.
  3. Get to main verbs quickly:
    1. Avoid long introductory phrases and clauses.
    2. Avoid interrupting the subject-verb connection.
  4. Open your sentences with information familiar to your reader.
  5. Push new, complex units of information to the ends of sentences.
  6. Begin sentences constituting a passage with consistent subjects/topics.
  7. Be concise:
    1. Cut meaningless and repeated words with obvious implications.
    2. Compress the meaning of a phrase into one or two words.
    3. Prefer affirmative sentences to negative ones.
  8. Control sprawl:
    1. Don’t tack more than one subordinate clause onto another.
    2. Extend sentences with resumptive, summative, and free modifiers.
    3. Extend sentences with coordinate structures, arranging elements from shorter to longer.
  9. Use parallel structures to create a sense of balance and­ elegance.
  10. Above all, write to others as you would have others write to you.

The Principles for Writing Coherently

  1. In your introduction, motivate readers to read what follows with a problem they care about.
  2. State your point or main claim clearly, usually at the end of that introduction.
  3. At the end of that point, introduce the important concepts in what follows.
  4. Make everything that follows relevant to your point.
  5. Make it clear where each part or section begins and ends.
  6. Open each part or section with a short introductory segment.
  7. Put the point of each part or section at the end of that opening segment.
  8. Order parts in a way that makes clear and visible sense to your readers.
  9. Begin sentences constituting a passage with consistent characters/subjects/topics.
  10. Create cohesive old-new links between sentences.