Writing clear sentences

Clear writing is mostly clear thinking made visible. If you do not know what you want to say, no amount of polishing will rescue the sentence. But even with a clear idea, sentences can get in the reader’s way, and a small number of habits fix most of the problems. None of them is new. Writers and teachers have been repeating versions of this advice for centuries, which is a good sign that it works.

In 1512 the Dutch scholar Erasmus published De copia, a textbook on style that taught students to say the same thing in dozens of different ways. It was enormously popular, and it was about abundance rather than economy: in one famous exercise he varies a single sentence, roughly “your letter pleased me greatly”, well over a hundred times. The point was not that every sentence should be ornate. It was that a writer who can see many ways of saying something is free to choose the best one. Most of the advice that follows is about choosing well.

The first habit is to put the actor first. Sentences are easiest to read when the subject does something. “A decision was made to delay the launch” leaves the reader asking who decided. “We delayed the launch” answers the question before it is asked, and is shorter. The passive voice hides who acted. Sometimes that is exactly the point, as when the actor is unknown or unimportant, or when a scientist wants to emphasise the method rather than the researcher. But much of the time it just makes the reader work harder, and in official writing it can become a way of avoiding responsibility.

The second habit is to use real verbs instead of disguised ones. Many weak sentences turn actions into nouns, which linguists call nominalisation. “We carried out an analysis of the data” becomes “We analysed the data”. “The committee reached a conclusion” becomes “The committee concluded”. “There was a reduction in costs” becomes “Costs fell”. Each change removes words and puts the action back in the verb, which is where readers expect to find it. A page full of nominalisations feels heavy and abstract even when the ideas are simple.

The third habit is to give each sentence one main idea. If a sentence needs to be read twice, it is probably carrying two or three ideas at once. Consider: “The results, which were collected over three months from two sites that used slightly different methods, suggest the effect is real but small.” The reader has to hold the subject, “the results”, in mind through two subordinate clauses before reaching the verb. Split it, and it becomes easy: “We collected results over three months from two sites. The sites used slightly different methods. Together, the results suggest the effect is real but small.” Long sentences are not wrong in themselves. A long sentence that flows, in which each clause follows naturally from the last, can be a pleasure to read, and much good prose is built from them. But when in doubt, cut.

The fourth habit is to prefer the short, familiar word. Use “use” rather than “utilise”, “help” rather than “facilitate”, “start” rather than “commence”, “about” rather than “approximately”. Short words are not less intelligent. They let the reader spend attention on your idea instead of on your vocabulary. George Orwell made this one of his six rules in “Politics and the English Language” in 1946, and the advice is just as useful in a business report or a scientific paper as it is in journalism.

The fifth is to cut words that do no work. Read each sentence and ask what each word adds. “In order to” almost always means “to”. “At this point in time” means “now”. “It is important to note that the results are mixed” means “The results are mixed”, and if the point is important, the reader will see that without being told. These small cuts add up. A page that loses a fifth of its words this way usually becomes easier to read without losing anything.

The sixth habit is to put the important thing at the end. English sentences tend to place their stress on the final words, where a speaker’s voice naturally falls. “The study found a clear effect, after many delays” leaves the reader thinking about the delays. “After many delays, the study found a clear effect” leaves them with the finding. The same information is in both sentences. Only the emphasis has changed, and emphasis is much of what makes writing clear.

The last habit is the simplest and the most reliable: read your writing aloud. The ear catches what the eye skips. Where you stumble, run out of breath or lose the thread, the reader will too. Writers from Flaubert, who is said to have shouted his sentences in a room he called his gueuloir, to modern editors have used the same test, because it works.

None of these rules should be followed mechanically. Good writers break each of them when there is a reason to. But they are the right defaults, and most unclear writing would be improved by applying them. This lesson closes the Learning how to learn series, which began with How to take notes you will actually reuse.