One of the best periodicals you're likely never to read is "The Economist."
I started reading it about twenty years ago. Partly because of David Abbott. Partly because my feed was being fed articles from the Economist. I found them a) genuinely interesting and b) short. Generally speaking the Economist limits its articles to a single page.
Anne Wroe, the Economist's surpassing obituary writer, offered an interest perspective on what makes the magazine different. She was talking about her job--obituaries--but it applies to many other spheres as well.
Wroe said (I'm paraphrasing) that because the Economist is a weekly, and limits coverage to one page, she knows other periodicals will have longer, more complete coverage. To get read, Wroe decided, she had to do something interesting. She had to unearth something that no other press would. Something that, even if you read about someone's passing in the New York Times, the London Times and the Wall Street Journal, you might give Wroe a read.
Wroe is also the editor of The Economist's "Style Guide." Which you can find on abebooks.com for under ten dollars, or download from amazon (if you can't help giving money to non-tax-paying billionaires for the price of about three cups of extortionate monopolistic coffee.)
It's only Wednesday, July 1, and perhaps the Cannes cacophony (emphasis on cocked-up phonies) and the summer heatwave have fried my brain. I seldom write on Wednesday for Thursday, but I'm behind the seven-ninety-eight ball (marked down from eight) and this will have to do.
Here, consider it largesse on the part of my largeness, is Wroe's introduction to the Economist's Style Guide, eleventh edition. If you're really hard up, you can download a pdf of it here, for free.
Doing so is way better than supporting democracy-saving, truth-telling independent journalism. So download away!
The precepts here are the Economist's way. But for almost half-a-century, they've been my way too. Outside of making me generally despised by everyone who knows me, it's worked out pretty well for me.
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Introduction
On only two scores can The Economist hope to outdo its rivals
consistently. One is the quality of its analysis; the other is the quality of its writing.
The aim of this book is to give some general advice on
writing, to point out some common errors and to set some arbitrary rules.
The first requirement of The Economist is that it should be readily understandable. Clarity of writing usually follows clarity of thought.
So think what you want to say, then say it as simply as possible.
Keep in mind George Orwell’s six elementary rules:
1 Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which
you are used to seeing in print.
2 Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3 If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
4 Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5 Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6 Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright
barbarous.
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Readers are primarily interested in what you have to say. By the
way in which you say it, you may encourage them either to read on or to give up. If you want them to read on:
Catch the attention of the reader and then get straight into the article. Do not spend several sentences clearing your throat, setting the scene or sketching in the background. Introduce the facts as you tell the story and hold the reader by the way you unfold the tale and by a fresh but unpretentious use of language.
In starting your article, let your model be the essays of
Francis Bacon. He starts “Of Riches” with “I cannot call riches
better than the baggage of virtue.” “Of Cunning” opens with
“We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom.” “Of
Suspicion” is instantly on the wing with “Suspicions amongst
thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight.”
Each of these beginnings carries implicitly within it an entire
essay. Each seizes the reader by the lapels and at once draws him into the subject. No gimmickry is needed, no flowery language, no literary contrivance. Plain words on their own carry enough meaning to provoke an intriguing thought, stir the reader’s curiosity and thus make him want to continue.
You must strive for a similar effect.
Articles in The Economist should be like essays, in that they have a beginning, a middle and an end. They should not be mere bits of information stitched together. Each should be a coherent whole, a series of paragraphs that follow logically in order and, ideally, will suffer if even one sentence is cut out. If the article is a report, the facts must be selected and presented as a story. If it is a leader or more analytical article, it should also have a sense of sequence, so that the reader feels he is progressing from a beginning to a conclusion.
Either way, it is up to you to provide the ideas, analysis
and argument that bind the elements of the article together.
That is the hard part. Once you have them, though, you need
only plain, straightforward words to express them. Do not
imagine that you can disguise the absence of thought with long
words, stale metaphors or the empty jargon of academics. In
moderation, however, you can enliven your writing with a fresh
metaphor, an occasional exuberance or an unusual word or
phrase that nicely suits your purpose.
Read through your writing several times. Edit it ruthlessly, whether by cutting or polishing or sharpening, on each occasion. Avoid repetition. Cut out anything superfluous. And resist any temptation to achieve a literary effect by making elliptical remarks or allusions to unexplained people or events. Rather, hold your reader’s attention by keeping the story moving. If the tale begins to flag, or the arguments seem less than convincing, you can rescue it only by the sharpness of your mind.
Nothing is to be gained by resorting to orotundities and grandiloquence, still less by calling on clichés and vogue expressions.
Unadorned, unfancy prose is usually all you need.
Do not be stuffy. “To write a genuine, familiar or truly English
style”, said Hazlitt, “is to write as anyone would speak in
common conversation who had a thorough command or
choice of words or who could discourse with ease, force and
perspicuity setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.”
Use the language of everyday speech, not that of spokesmen, lawyers or bureaucrats (so prefer let to permit, people to persons, buy to purchase, colleague to peer, way out to exit, present to gift, rich to wealthy, show to demonstrate, break to violate).
Pomposity and long-windedness tend to obscure meaning, or reveal the lack of it: strip them away in favour of plain words.
Do not be hectoring or arrogant. Those who disagree with you are not necessarily stupid or insane. Nobody needs to be described as silly: let your analysis show that he is. When you express opinions, do not simply make assertions. The aim is not just to tell readers what you think, but to persuade them; if you use arguments, reasoning and evidence, you may succeed. Go easy on the oughts and shoulds.
Do not be too pleased with yourself. Don’t boast of your own
cleverness by telling readers that you correctly predicted
something or that you have a scoop. You are more likely to bore
or irritate them than to impress them.
Do not be too chatty. Surprise, surprise is more irritating than
informative. So is Ho, ho and, in the middle of a sentence, wait
for it, etc.
Do not be too didactic. If too many sentences begin Compare,
Consider, Expect, Imagine, Look at, Note, Prepare for, Remember or Take, readers will think they are reading a textbook (or, indeed, a style book). This may not be the way to persuade them to renew their subscriptions.
Do your best to be lucid. (“I see but one rule: to be clear”, Stendhal.) Simple sentences help. Keep complicated constructions and gimmicks to a minimum, if necessary by remembering the New Yorker’s comment: “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.”
Mark Twain described how a good writer treats sentences:
“At times he may indulge himself with a long one, but he
will make sure there are no folds in it, no vaguenesses, no
parenthetical interruptions of its view as a whole; when he has
done with it, it won’t be a sea-serpent with half of its arches
under the water; it will be a torch-light procession.”
Long paragraphs, like long sentences, can confuse the reader. “The paragraph”, according to Fowler, “is essentially a unit of thought, not of length; it must be homogeneous in subject matter and sequential in treatment.” One-sentence paragraphs should be used only occasionally.
Clear thinking is the key to clear writing. “A scrupulous
writer”, observed Orwell, “in every sentence that he writes will
ask himself at least four questions, thus:
1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?”
Scrupulous writers will also notice that their copy is edited
only lightly and is likely to be used. It may even be read.
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I suppose there might be someone reading this who will tell themselves they could ask Claude to re-write their copy in the style of "The Economist." Maybe that will be good enough. And there are plenty of people within agencies and on the client-side who are comforted by and comfortable with as Orwell wrote above metaphors, similes or other figures of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
All that's fine, if that's the route you want to go in your life.
But for me the key to all this sits about four inches above this sentence. Clear thinking is the key to clear writing. What we're talking about here is clear thinking. It's usually persuasive thinking. Thinking that leads to the sale.
I've been fortunate in my career. I worked for parts of four decades on IBM, during an era when IBM and Ogilvy refused to talk down to its audience. I had to understand business and tech issues well enough to write about them simply and believably.
Even today (or, especially today) as a bona fide alte kocker, I have a 35-page document on my Mac of links that take complicated procedures or stories and break them down so they're easy to read, understand, remember and pass-along.
Explaining how things work and why you should want them used to be the sine non qua of advertising. Our reason for being. Somehow that's been replaced by making a pop-tart part of culture, or a mayonnaise.
Because I don't believe that (and because I insist on being paid a living wage) I am out of the mainstream of the ad industry. I'm fine with that.
About a quarter-of-a-century ago, I wrote this tagline for myself.
I like business advantages.
