Joseph Dobrian: How to Write Good, August 2000

how to write good

This Month's Column:
THE ONE BIG RULE OF GOOD WRITING

When you get right down to it, there’s only one important rule for good writing. The other “rules” aren't really rules at all. They’re guidelines that help you to follow what I call the One Big Rule, which is this:

Brevity, precision and clarity-and the greatest of these is clarity.

Keep the One Big Rule in mind, from now on, every time you write anything. It will help you in all types of writing: letters to friends and relatives, business writing, journalism, technical writing, essays, novels and even poetry. You might say, “A lot of supposedly great writers were not exactly brief: They'd go on and on sometimes!” That’s true, but you’ll find that the best writers always wrote as clearly, precisely and briefly as they could. They may have used a lot of words, but they didn't waste words-and if their books are sometimes hard to read, it’s because what they had to say was very detailed or complicated. Writers who don’t observe the One Big Rule may get published now and then, but their reputations don’t last long.

Now that you know the one big rule of good writing-which makes the whole process a lot less scary, doesn't it?-it's time to consider a few reasons for good writing:

Good writing makes you look good. It makes you look intelligent, educated and hard-working. It gets you noticed, and it gets you promoted. It also gets you published. If you can write well, you can write articles in magazines, technical journals and newsletters-and having published an article on a certain subject makes you, officially, an expert on that subject!

Good writing makes your boss and your company look good. If your boss isn’t a good writer, or if she’s a foreigner who can’t write English fluently, she’ll lose face unless you take her letters and memos and knock them into good shape. If every communication that comes out of her office follows the One Big Rule, she’ll look good, the company will look good-and you’ll get some of the credit.

It's an up-and-coming skill-believe it or not! It seems that we have to document whatever we do in the office nowadays, whether it involves building a dossier on an employee so you can fire her later, or charting your relationship with a supplier, or expanding your training manual. Writing of this sort has really got to be clear and precise! E-mail and other on-line services are becoming more widespread, and in many cases they're taking the place of phone conversations and face-to-face meetings. All in all, you’ll be writing more, not less, as time goes on. Finally, English has become the international language of business. More and more people are speaking and writing it, all over the world. To communicate with all these people, you have to have good writing skills, just as you have to know how to smile.

If you don't write well, who else will? We all know how few people in the business world know, or care to know, how to write well. You’re probably one of only a few people in your company who are bothering to learn how. In a way, then, the whole firm is depending on you.

Anyone can learn to be a good writer. It’s like any other skill: To get good at it, you have to want to be good at it, and you have to practice a lot. Write as much and as often as you can. Keep a diary; write letters to friends; write poetry, fiction and essays.

Reading is just as important as writing. It doesn’t much matter what you read about, as long as you read good books on whatever subjects interest you. By reading good writing, you’ll pick up all kinds of little tricks for making your own writing more interesting. You’ll also expand your vocabulary and your understanding of the language.

(If you’re especially interested in improving your style, you should probably concentrate on modern writers. Some of the best 20th-century writers of plain but stylish English are Isak Dinesen, A.J. Liebling, Norman Mailer, George Orwell, William F. Buckley, Jr., E.B. White, Edmund Wilson, and Virginia Woolf. One of the best technical writers of this century was the golfer Bobby Jones.)

- Josephus Rex Imperator