Why and how to write
Writing good takes practice. Does that sentence strike you as odd? Shouldn’t it have been writing well takes practice? Writing is an art and a craft. As such, it, like jazz, combines classic rules with subjectivity and personality. Good writers know to bend the rules to get your attention.
But why write at all? That question is especially important now that AI can do a lot of general writing for you in a matter of seconds. Being a writer is not reserved for just glasses-wearing, collard-shirted, air-conditioned folks like myself. My favorite writer, Christopher Hitchens, said once that you’re a capital-W Writer if you feel not that you want to write but that you must write or else life would not be worth living. However, writing is a useful exercise for everyone, like eating well or working out.
In a publication I like—I hesitate to call it a blog—named Farnam Street, writer Shane Parrish argued, “Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Importantly, writing is also the process by which you figure it out.”
Today, it’s important that we all take a minute to reflect on what we don’t know. I’ve written about this before. There are severe limitations to what we know and even to what is knowable to begin with. Cue all the “data-driven” articles floating around. At any rate, we can figure out what we know and don’t know within those limitations through writing.
Putting your thoughts into words—in the correct order, with the right tone, for a specific audience—refines how well you really know your own thoughts. And, as Parrish notes, it helps you figure out what you don’t. For example, writing this piece is making me really think about how to explain writing, something I haven’t done in a very long time. And I’ve been a professional writer for over ten years.
In short, just as going to the gym exercises the body, bringing to life physical potential in the shape of muscles, sitting down at the keyboard or with pen in hand exercises the mind, bringing to life mental, spiritual, and emotional potential in the shape of words.
How to write
Now that we know why writing is important, let’s talk about how to write, starting with the basics: People confuse the terms grammar, punctuation, and style.
Grammar
Grammar is syntax (word order) and the actual mechanics of language, like cases (objective, subjective, subjunctive) or parts of speech (subject, verb, object, adjective, preposition, etc). You likely learned how to diagram sentences in school many years ago. I never did, praise be to Jesus. I hear it sucks.
The point of that exercise was to show you how language works. You likely thought it was silly at the time because of course you know how language works. But that’s mostly because you’re fluent—you speak the mechanics of language naturally. You know that the sentence “Who did you go with?” should really be “Whom did you go with?”—or the even more snooty “With whom did you go?”—even if you don’t actually talk that way, because you intuitively understand the difference between subjective (who) and objective case (whom).
You can rephrase that sentence to see it more clearly: You wouldn’t say, “I went with he” (subjective) but “I went with him” (objective). There are tons of mechanics like this that you know, but also some that trip you up. An expert writer knows these mechanics and knows when to break them: Writing good is colloquial for southern American English, so I can use that construction if I want that tone in my writing. Grammarians also know that “flat adverbs” are debated but acceptable.
Punctuation
Punctuation is just the little marks on the screen, like a comma or period. Remember that these marks were invented—WRITINGUSEDTOLOOKLIKETHIS. We’re still sorting out what these marks mean and why, so don’t let others think they’re smarter than you are about them. Those people are snobs who refuse to acknowledge that it’s all a human invention: Lower-case letters appeared as Carolingian minuscules in the eighth century. The city of St Andrews in Scotland notably does not use the apostrophe (i.e., St Andrew’s) because the town was so named (around the middle ages) before the apostrophe was invented (1496).
Some writers hate the use of semicolons, a mark that also first appeared in 1496 in the same book as the apostrophe. Some writers adore them. Some use them sparingly, only if a comma wouldn’t do because using it would create a comma splice. I’m in the latter camp. I avoid it if I can. J. K. Rowling, I’ve learned, is squarely in the first camp. She sprinkles them like salt on fries. I assume it’s because she wants the reader to hurry through some of her descriptions, since the reader pauses longer at a period than at a semicolon.
Style
Style (similar to what’s called usage) comprises arguments over whether titles should be capitalized or how you should abbreviate states, for example. Does the quotation mark go inside the comma or outside? Depends! British English says you should go inside, while American English typically goes outside. How about inside colons? (Inside.)
There are many types of styles, but the two most popular are AP and Chicago. You may have noticed that I spell out words like eighth rather than write 8th. That’s because I prefer Chicago over AP. Chicago has a cleaner, more academic style with more standard rules than does AP. The latter seems to make up rules as they go without any principles guiding them. If you want to dive into this linguistic warfare, I highly recommend David Foster Wallace’s essay “Tense Present.” (Put quotes around titles of shorter works; italicize titles of longer works like books and films.) It’s hilarious and sad that this is what civilized human beings fight about. Nevertheless, marketers and journalists prefer AP over Chicago for some unknowable reason, but likely because they’re barbarians.
Style is what most people think of when they think of grammar. The two best books for getting started are The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker (see its YouTube video) and Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (see its YouTube video). You can get the gist of these books by watching YouTube. Many types of dictionaries help with style, but the best are Merriam-Webster (the dictionary preferred by Chicago), The American Heritage Dictionary, and Wordnik. Christopher Hitchens called The Oxford English Dictionary the final court of appeal about words and their meanings. Grammarly is also a great first resource to get the hang of it.
Additionally, we borrow many phrases from other languages that are often confused and exploited by snobs. Smart writers know where the landmines are. Clients have corrected me by saying, “Data is plural.” Well, yes, but so is agenda, fora, stadia, media, and many other Latin words that we Americans butcher. Until I see “Here’s today’s agendum” commonly used, I’ll stick with data as a singular noun, thanks. Those same clients often confuse the use of i.e. (Latin for ”that is”) and e.g. (”for example”).
Another one to keep in mind: the vocative comma, or comma of address. When you’re writing, “Hey, friend,” be sure to throw that comma in after your greeting.
Three rules for writing
Let’s go back to writing good. My three rules for writing are cut, color, and clarity.
The rule for “cut” is to say it with the fewest words possible. No one wants to hear you drone on and on, much like I’ve done with this post. Say it and get out, especially in an email. Otherwise you’ll bore your reader, the one unforgivable sin of a writer, as Hitchens also said.
The rule for “color” means to give your words some personality, which requires detail, detail, and more detail. Most of us live our lives by seeing the world. We see images of our surroundings and our brain interprets them to make sense of our lives. A good writer does the same thing. “Show, don’t tell,” as the saying goes. That’s why poetry is full of vivid, concrete images, like a painting but with words.
Many writers—and marketers, for that matter—think they need to use generalized words to appeal to the most people. “This is too bold or edgy,” many clients have told me. “I don’t want to alienate people,” they’ll say. Counterintuitively, however, the more detailed and specific your words are, the more universal your appeal. Think of your favorite works. I’m willing to bet they use clear, arresting images that stick with you forever.
A few sentences still haunt me:
“The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week,” from Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life.”
“The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida,” from Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”
“It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl—she must have swept them from the corners of her studio—was full of dead bees,” from Robert Hass’s “A Story about the Body.”
Finally, for “clarity”: Above all, writing must be clear. Edit, edit, and edit some more to make sure what you’re saying is the clearest expression of that idea. Lots of practice is required here. (Oh, a passive sentence!) There’s no other way of getting around it. That’s why everyone must write to learn how to think more clearly.
The most important book for writing well is Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. Writers are even better readers, so you first have to learn how to read well. One of my favorite nonfiction pieces is “The Really Big One” by Kathryn Schultz. Now that’s great writing.
Of course, copywriting is a little different than fiction or editorial writing, and for that a great help has been The Copywriter’s Handbook by Robert Bly. Also consider Copyhackers, started by a long-time tech copywriter.
Finally, an essay that really changed me was George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” It shaped not only how I write but how I think about so many important things, like politics, relationships, and more. Orwell was Hitchens’s favorite writer. The book 1984 is a must-read. He has six rules for writing:
Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.
No doubt you’ll find many of these rules broken in this very post. That’s the way of the writer, I’m afraid. It’s a curse you must exorcise daily. That’s the exercise of a writer.
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