Ep 168: How to Be a Better Writer (Pt 3): Write Tight

In a recent release of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell introduces his podcast listeners to Dr. Bernadine Healy. In this episode, he asks Johanna Schneider, who worked with Dr. Healy at the National Institutes of Health, to describe her to listeners. Schneider said several things, including this: "She had a wooden sign on her desk that said, ‘Strong verbs, short sentences.’ And that was Bernie.” Using that wooden sign’s message as a callback, Gladwell seemed to say that Dr. Healy's value of strong verbs and short sentences conveyed formidable strength, in person and on paper. A force to be reckoned with, Dr. Healy communicated with precision and clarity. “Strong verbs, short sentences” reminds me of the advice we hear so often: Write tight. “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” ~ George Orwell. “Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn’t be there.” ~ William Zinsser “Omit needless words.” ~ William Strunk Jr. I thought about stopping right there. I mean, “Strong verbs, short sentences”? Strunk nailed it. Omit Needless Words In an increasingly impatient world accustomed to texts, tweets, and sound bytes, this classic advice feels timely and, like it or not, necessary. Readers are impatient. We can’t waste their time. As we embrace this new cultural tendency toward sentence fragments and textspeak, we can write so tight we squeeze out nuance, texture, and meaning. If we interpret “Omit needless words” to mean “Write in the sparest style possible, like Hemingway,” we may be missing the point. The Elements of Style elaborates on its own concise, unambiguous, three-word sentence, “Omit needless words” when it says this: Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. (The Elements of Style) Let every word tell. Make every word count. Include Necessary Words Instead of hacking away at our work, reducing it to a series of short sentences that hammer away at the reader’s ear, we study our work to determine the necessary elements. Sometimes, we need more words for clarity. Our culture often points to Ernest Hemingway as the master of strong verbs and short sentences, elevating him to the master of concise, clear writing—so much so, someone created an app called The Hemingway Editor. From its help page, it claims the app "makes your writing bold and clear...Almost any bit of writing could use some cutting. Less is more, etc…. So, the Hemingway Editor will highlight (in yellow and red) where your writing is too dense. Try removing needless words or splitting the sentence into two. Your readers will thank you.” Using the Automated Readability Index, the Hemingway Editor evaluates the “grade level” of your writing style when you paste a portion into the app, which you can do online for free. Turns out Hemingway didn’t write like Hemingway, at least not the way we’ve oversimplified his style, reducing it to strong verbs and short, declarative sentences. Hemingway Fails I plucked The Sun Also Rises from my shelf. Listen to this sentence: He was married five years, had three children,