The Sense of Style summary

There are many writing styles from which to draw inspiration, but when it comes to developing clarity and conciseness, both the author and literary scholars are agreed that no style is better than the classic.

The primary objective of classic style is to present things to the reader in a way that is clear and simple enough for them to understand, no matter how complex the topic. To achieve this, the writer must say goodbye to the pedantic or unnecessarily analytical tendencies that so often crop up in other styles of writing, especially those in academia or business and legal professions.

Have you ever stopped reading an article because it was filled with words you didn’t understand? Texts quickly become incomprehensible when the writer forgets that her readers aren’t all experts on the subject.

This curse of knowledge reflects the writer’s inability to place herself in the position of the reader, who may only have a rudimentary understanding of the subject. So what can you do to avoid this in your writing?

If someone were to inform you that “Eating Jerry is sandwich a,” you would likely have no idea what was being communicated. That’s because the syntax – the order of the words in the sentence – is jumbled. “Jerry is eating a sandwich,” on the other hand, is much easier to understand.

Unfortunately, syntactical errors are usually not as obvious as in the example above, making them somewhat difficult to spot. But a deeper understanding of syntax can help you spot your errors, which, in turn, will make your writing much clearer.

There are two major voices in English: the active voice and the passive voice. Let’s look at both.

One uses the active voice when the subject of the sentence does something to someone else. For example, “A dog bit Jack on the leg.” The subject in this sentence, the dog, is biting the object, Jack, and is therefore active.

Making compelling sentences by stringing together the right words is only part of the equation. You also have to string your sentences together to make a coherent text.

A series of well-written sentences may still result in an incoherent mess. To write an intelligible text, you must first have a clear topic in mind and an outline that tracks the flow of your ideas. Your outline doesn’t have to be laid out in the traditional style, with letters, numbers and roman numerals; all you need is something that establishes arcs of coherence – clear links from one sentence or passage to the next.

You’re in the grocery store. There are only nine items in your cart. And so you move toward the sign that reads “Ten Items or Less.”

As you’re waiting in line, someone approaches you and says, in a tone full of disdain, “Oh, illiteracy! Should that sign not read ‘Ten Items or Fewer?’ ‘Less’ is incorrect!”

Many writers have paused to contemplate whether they should use “who” or “whom,” a distinction that confuses even experienced writers.

The distinction between who and whom becomes clear, however, if you do this simple exercise. Take this example sentence: She tricked him. Our sentence can be transformed into two distinct questions: Who tricked him?, which removes the word “she,” and Whom did she trick?, which removes the word “him.”