article of interest

[Brad De Long]

>Michael Yates wrote:
>
>>The current issue of Lingua Franca has an interesting article titled,"Is
>>Bad Writing Necessary."  On one side naturally is the bete noir of many
>>on these lists,  Judith Butler.  On the other is our dear friend and
>>list contributor, Katha Pollitt.
>
>Sometimes I think there's no excuse for bad writing, but on the 
>other hand, it's not easy to write well, and very few people do. 
>Katha's a poet and a fine prose stylist, but how many people can you 
>say that about? Science writing is largely terrible - "hard" and 
>"soft" sciences; who'd hold up the American Economic Review as 
>anything but a negative example (and not just for its prose!)? 
>Butler cut her teeth reading Hegel, for god's sake.
>
>Doug

Joseph Williams (1990), Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago: 
University of Chicago: 0226899152).

Recommended

Most books on how to write better English are pretty near to useless. 
Many of them scare you into worrying that you might use "which" when 
you should use "that" (never mind that an extra "which" never caused 
any reader the smallest bit of confusion). Others demand that you 
strive for "clarity" or "brevity" or "coherence"--but then somehow 
never provide any useful advice on just how, exactly, to do so.

Joseph Williams's Style: Toward Clarity and Grace is an exception. It 
is the only truly useful book on English prose style that I have ever 
found. Even Strunk and White cannot compete with the quality of the 
advice that Williams gives. Perhaps more important, the advice that 
Williams gives can be used. As Williams puts it, his aim is to go 
"beyond platitudes." Advice like "'Be clear' is like telling me to 
'Hit the ball squarely.' I know that. What I don't know is how to do 
it." Williams tells us how to do it.

Williams's advice is particularly useful because it is reader-based. 
Most books on style are rule-based: follow these rules and you will 
be a good writer. Williams recognizes that clear writing is writing 
that makes the reader feel clear about what he or she is reading. 
This difference in orientation makes Williams's advice much more 
profound: he has a theory of why the rules are what they are (and 
what to do when the rules conflict) that books that focus on rules 
alone lack...

Brad DeLong