Style still matters, for at least three reasons. First, it ensures that writers will get their messages across, sparing readers from squandering their precious moments on earth deciphering opaque prose. When the effort fails, the result can be calamitous—as Strunk and White put it, "death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram." Governments and corporations have found that small improvements in clarity can prevent vast amounts of error, frustration, and waste,9 and many countries have recently made clear language the law of the land.
Second, style earns trust. If readers can see that a writer cares about consistency and accuracy in her prose, they will be reassured that the writer cares about those virtues in conduct they cannot see as easily. Here is how one technology executive explains why he rejects job applications filled with errors of grammar and punctuation: "If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use it's, then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with." And if that isn't enough to get you to brush up your prose, consider the discovery of the dating site OkCupid that sloppy grammar and spelling in a profile are "huge turn-offs." As one client said, "If you're trying to date a woman, I don't expect flowery Jane Austen prose.
But aren't you trying to put your best foot forward?"12
Style, not least, adds beauty to the world. To a literate reader, a crisp sentence, an arresting metaphor, a witty aside, an elegant turn of phrase are among life's greatest pleasures. And as we shall see in the first chapter, this thoroughly impractical virtue of good writing is where the practical effort of mastering good writing must begin#2511•
7
The best words not only pinpoint an idea better than any alternative but echo it in their sound and articulation, a phenomenon called phonesthetics, the feeling of sound#2513•
9
The curse of knowledge is far more than a curiosity in economic theory. The inability to set aside something that you know but that someone else does not know is such a pervasive affliction of the human mind that psychologists keep discovering related versions of it and giving it new names. There is egocentrism, the inability of children to imagine a simple scene, such as three toy mountains on a tabletop, from another person's vantage point.
There's hindsight bias, the tendency of people to think that an outcome they happen to know, such as the confirmation of a disease diagnosis or the outcome of a war, should have been obvious to someone who had to make a prediction about it before the fact.
There's false consensus, in which people who make a touchy personal decision (like agreeing to help an experimenter by wearing a sandwich board around campus with the word REPENT) assume that everyone else would make the same decision.
There's illusory transparency, in which observers who privately know the backstory to a conversation and thus can tell that a speaker is being sarcastic assume that the speaker's naïve listeners can somehow detect the sarcasm, too.
And there's mindblindness, a failure to mentalize, or a lack of a theory of mind, in which a three-year-old who sees a toy being hidden while a second child is out of the room assumes that the other child will look for it in its actual location rather than where she last saw it.#2490•
There's an old saying that for the want of a nail the battle was lost, and the same is true for the want of an adjective: the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War is only the most famous example of a military disaster caused by vague orders.#2488•
Richard Feynman once wrote, "If you ever hear yourself saying, 'I think I understand this,' that means you don't."#2509•
Many experiments have shown that readers understand and remember material far better when it is expressed in concrete language that allows them to form visual images, like the sentences on the right: 25
The set fell off the table.
The ivory chess set fell off the table.
The measuring gauge was covered with dust.
The oil-pressure gauge was covered with dust.
Georgia O'Keeffe called some of her works "equivalents" because their forms were abstracted in a way that gave the emotional parallel of the source experience.
Georgia O'Keeffe's landscapes were of angular skyscrapers and neon thoroughfares, but mostly of the bleached bones, desert shadows, and weathered crosses of rural New Mexico.#2495•
Compare the professionalese on the left with the concrete equivalents on the right:
Participants were tested under conditions of good to excellent acoustic isolation.
We tested the students in a quiet room.
Management actions at and in the immediate vicinity of airports do little to mitigate the risk of off-airport strikes during departure and approach.
Trapping birds near an airport does little to reduce the number of times a bird will collide with a plane as it takes off or lands.
We believe that the ICTS approach to delivering integrated solutions, combining effective manpower, canine services and cutting-edge technology was a key differentiator in the selection process.
They chose our company because we protect buildings with a combination of guards, dogs, and sensors.
What we see as "a quiet room" an experimenter sees as "testing conditions," because that's what she was thinking about when she chose the room. For a safety expert at the top of the chain of command, who lives every day with the responsibility for managing risks, the bird traps set out by her underlings are a distant memory.
The public-relations hack for a security firm refers to the company's activities in a press statement in terms of the way she thinks about them when selling them to potential clients.#2500•
10
make an appearance with
appear with
is capable of being
can be
is dedicated to providing
provides
in the event that
if
it is imperative that we
we must
brought about the organization of
organized
significantly expedite the process of
speed up
on a daily basis
daily
for the purpose of
to
in the matter of
about
in view of the fact that
since
owing to the fact that
because
relating to the subject of
regarding
have a facilitative impact
help
were in great need of
needed
at such time as
when
It is widely observed that X
X#2486•
Another tradeoff between brevity and clarity may be seen in the placement of modifiers. A noun can be modified either by a prepositional phrase on the right or by a naked noun on the left: data on manufacturing versus manufacturing data, strikes by teachers versus teacher strikes, stockholders in a company versus company stockholders.#2491•
The cleft inverts the usual ordering: the new information is thrust into the spotlight early, and the given information, which serves as its background, comes at the end.#2499•
11
In a resemblance relation, a statement makes a claim that overlaps in content with the one that came before it. The most obvious two are similarity and contrast:
Coherence Relation
Example
Typical Connectives
Similarity
Herons live in the northern United States. Herons live in most of Canada.
and, similarly, likewise, too
Contrast
Herons have one thing in their favor: they are opportunistic hunters. Herons have one thing not in their favor: they defend a fishing hole even when it is frozen.
but, in contrast, on the other hand, alternatively
Similarity and contrast link two propositions that are similar in most ways but different in at least one way.#2493•
If you do indicate a connection, though, do it just once. Prose becomes stuffy when an insecure writer hammers the reader over the head with redundant indicators of a connection, as if unsure that one would be enough.
Perhaps the reason so many people are in the dark is because they want it that way. [explanation]
Perhaps the reason so many people are in the dark is that they want it that way.
There are many biological influences of psychological traits such as cognitive ability, conscientiousness, impulsivity, risk aversion, and the like. [exemplification]
There are many biological influences of psychological traits such as cognitive ability, conscientiousness, impulsivity, and risk aversion.
We separately measured brainwide synchronization in local versus long-range channel pairs. [contrast]
We separately measured brainwide synchronization in local and long-range channel pairs.#2506•
The first redundancy, the reason is because, is widely disliked, because the word reason already implies that we are dealing with an explanation, and we don't need a because to remind us. (Some purists also frown on the reason why, but it has been used by good writers for centuries and should be no more exceptionable than the place where or the time when.) Gratuitous redundancy makes prose difficult not just because readers have to duplicate the effort of figuring something out, but because they naturally assume that when a writer says two things she means two things, and fruitlessly search for the nonexistent second point.#2504•
Baruch Spinoza pointed out that the human mind cannot suspend disbelief in the truth or falsity of a statement and leave it hanging in logical limbo awaiting a "true" or "false" tag to be hung on it. To hear or read a statement is to believe it, at least for a moment. For us to conclude that something is not the case, we must take the extra cognitive step of pinning the mental tag "false" on a proposition.
Any statement that is untagged is treated as if it is true#2510•
The cognitive difference between believing that a proposition is true (which requires no work beyond understanding it) and believing that it is false (which requires adding and remembering a mental tag) has enormous implications for a writer. The most obvious is that a negative statement such as The king is not dead is harder on the reader than an affirmative one like The king is alive.
Every negation requires mental homework, and when a sentence contains many of them the reader can be overwhelmed.
Even worse, a sentence can have more negations than you think it does.
Not all negation words begin with n; many have the concept of negation tucked inside them, such as few, little, least, seldom, though, rarely, instead, doubt, deny, refute, avoid, and ignore.#2514•
Negative sentences are easy when the reader already has an affirmative in mind or can create one on short notice; all he has to do is pin a "false" tag onto it. But concocting a statement that you have trouble believing in the first place (such as "A herring is a mammal"), and then negating it, requires two bouts of cognitive heavy lifting rather than one.#2505•
When an author has to negate something that a reader doesn't already believe, she has to set it up as a plausible belief on his mental stage before she knocks it down. Or, to put it more positively, when a writer wants to negate an unfamiliar proposition, she should unveil the negation in two stages:
1. You might think . . .
2. But no.#2512•
Kennedy declared, "We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard." That sounds a lot classier than "We don't choose to go to the moon because it is easy but because it is hard."#2503•
Here's a rule: Never write a sentence of the form "X not Y because Z," such as Dave is not evil because he did what he was told.#2502•
In one thematic string we have terms like criminals, criminal warfare, crime, fun, profit, gangs, mafias, thugs, mercenaries, troublemakers, preys on the weak, executioners, violence, desertion, flight, whim, opportunity, and run. In the other we have ordinary men, training, indoctrination, honor, glory, reputation, shame, loyalty, code, and believe in a cause. We#2517•
12
The word less may not be used for countable items, as in the sign over the supermarket express lane which restricts customers to TEN ITEMS OR LESS; the sign should read TEN ITEMS OR FEWER.
A modifier may not contain a dangling participle, such as Lying in bed, everything seemed so different, where the implicit subject of the participle lying (I) is different from the subject of the main clause (everything).#2535•
The first is that English has two kinds of conditional constructions:13
If you leave now, you will get there on time. [an open conditional]
If you left now, you would get there on time. [a remote conditional]#2531•
The first is called an open conditional, from the expression "an open possibility." It refers to a situation that the writer is uncertain about, and it invites the reader to draw inferences or make predictions about that situation.#2532•
The second kind is called a remote conditional, from the expression "a remote possibility." It refers to a counterfactual, highly improbable, blue-sky, or make-believe world, one that the writer thinks is unlikely to be true but whose implications are worth exploring#2528•
Remote conditionals are the finicky ones, though their demands, as we shall see, are not as arbitrary as they at first seem. The formula is that the if-clause must have a past-tense verb, and the then-clause must contain would or a similar auxiliary such as could, should, or might. If we take a typical double-would conditional (left side) and put the if-clause into the past tense, it instantly sounds classier:
If only she would have listened to me, this would never have happened.
If only she had listened to me, this would never have happened.
The problem with the left-hand version is that would have does not belong in the if-clause, only in the then-clause. The job of the conditional would is to explain what ought to happen in the make-believe world; it does not set up that world, a task that is reserved for the if-clause and its past-tense verb.#2523•
We can see this in the contrast between open conditionals in the present tense and their remote conditionals in the past tense:
If you leave now, you can get there on time.
If you left now, you could get there on time.
If you leave now, you will get there on time.
If you left now, you would get there on time.
If you leave now, you may get there on time.
If you left now, you might get there on time.
If you leave now, you shall get there on time.
If you left now, you should get there on time.#2526•
A good piece of advice on when to pied-pipe and when to strand comes from Theodore Bernstein, who invokes the principle emphasized in chapter 4: select the construction that allows you to end a sentence with a phrase that is heavy or informative or both.#2533•
By the same principle, a preposition should be stranded at the end of a sentence when it contributes a crucial bit of information, as in music to read by, something to guard against, and that's what this tool is for, or when it pins down the meaning of an idiom, as in It's nothing to sneeze at, He doesn't know what he's talking about, or She's a woman who can be counted on.#2527•
Also, in careful writing, were conveys a somewhat stronger sense of remoteness than was does, implying that the scenario is contrary to fact: If he were in love with her, he'd propose accuses him of not being in love; If he was in love with her, he'd propose leaves the door open a crack, and the present-tense open conditional#2525•
The condition of the first house we visited was better than the second can pass unnoticed in speech but can be grating on the page, because it compares apples (the condition) with oranges (the house). A careful reader will be happier with was better than that of the second; the cost of the additional empty words is outweighed by the pleasure of parallel syntax and semantics (a condition in each case).#2521•
Neither means "not one of the two," and it is singular: Neither book was any good, not Neither book were any good. The same is true of either, even when it picks one item from a pair: Either of the candidates is experienced enough to run the country, not are. Likewise, the one in anyone and everyone, the body in somebody and everybody, and the thing in nothing shout that they are referring to one thing at a time (even though the words rope in the entire universe of individuals), and that makes each of them singular: Anyone is welcome to try; Everyone eats at my house; Everybody is a star; Nothing is easy.#2522•
When the two are conceptually linked but the writer feels no need to pinpoint the coherence relation that holds between them, they can be joined with a semicolon; the semicolon is the all-purpose way to eliminate a comma splice. When the coherence relation is elaboration or exemplification (when one is tempted to say that is, in other words, which is to say, for example, here's what I have in mind, or Voilà!), they may be linked with a colon: like this.
When the second sentence intentionally interrupts the flow of the discussion, requiring the reader to wake up, think twice, or snap out of it, a writer can use a dash—dashes can enliven writing, as long as they are used sparingly.
And when the writer pinpoints the coherence relation he has in mind with an explicit connective such as a coordinator (and, or, but, yet, so, nor) or a preposition (although, except, if, before, after, because, for), a comma is fine, because the phrase is a mere supplement (like the underlined clause, which I fastened to the preceding one with a comma).#2529•
Here, then, are the possibilities (the asterisk indicates an illicit comma splice):
*Your lecture is scheduled for 5 PM, it is preceded by a meeting.
Your lecture is scheduled for 5 PM; it is preceded by a meeting.
Your lecture is scheduled for 5 PM—it is preceded by a meeting.
Your lecture is scheduled for 5 PM, but it is preceded by a meeting.
Your lecture is scheduled for 5 PM; however, it is preceded by a meeting.
*Your lecture is scheduled for 5 PM, however, it is preceded by a meeting.#2520•
Humans are cursed with the deadly combination of a highly fallible memory and an overconfidence in how much they know#2524•
Though it's fun to reduce a complex issue to a war between two slogans, two camps, or two schools of thought, it is rarely a path to understanding. Few good ideas can be insightfully captured in a single word ending with -ism, and most of our ideas are so crude that we can make more progress by analyzing and refining them than by pitting them against each other in a winner-take-all contest.#2519•