Clear writing

How to write prose that a busy reader understands on the first pass: the core principle, the canonical rules (Orwell, Strunk, Zinsser, Pinker) and where they go wrong, structure, sentences, word choice, punctuation, readability formulas and an editing process. Applying it to memos, emails and pitches is in persuasive writing; docs, design docs and commit messages are in technical writing. Reader-first thinking is the same idea as in UX/UI design.

The core principle

Clear writing is clear thinking made visible, aimed at a specific reader. Almost every rule below is a corollary of three ideas.

Zinsser puts the first one bluntly in On Writing Well (chapter "Simplicity"): "Clear thinking becomes clear writing: one can't exist without the other." Paul Graham makes the same point from the other side in "Putting Ideas into Words" (2022): writing about something usually shows you that you did not know it as well as you thought.

Practical consequences:

• Write the point first, then the document. If you cannot write the one-sentence version, you are still thinking, not writing. That is fine, but label the draft as thinking.
• Name the reader. "The CFO who will approve this" produces a different document from "people interested in our infrastructure". Write for one real person; others will cope.
• Decide what the reader should do or believe afterward. Informing, deciding and persuading need different shapes (see persuasive writing).
• The reader cannot interrupt. In conversation a confused listener asks. On the page, every gap you leave is filled by a guess or a closed tab.

The canonical rules

Orwell's six rules

George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (Horizon, 1946). Before the rules he lists the questions a "scrupulous writer" asks of every sentence: "What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?" Then:

I think the following rules will cover most cases:

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

(Text as published by the Orwell Foundation; some printings add serial commas in rules i and v.)

Orwell's own essay contains passives and long words; he says himself that "one could keep all of them and still write bad English". The rules are a checklist against habits, not a definition of good prose.

Strunk and White

William Strunk Jr privately printed The Elements of Style for his Cornell students in 1918; E. B. White revised and expanded it for Macmillan in 1959. The useful core is in Strunk's original "Elementary Principles of Composition" (rule numbers from the 1918 text):

Strunk's rule 13 in full: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell." The second sentence is the part everyone forgets: concision is about every word earning its place, not about brevity.

The critique. Linguist Geoffrey Pullum's "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice" (Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2009) argues that the book's "advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense". His main points:

• Much of the style advice is harmless but empty: "Omit needless words" is "useless" because "The students who know which words are needless don't need the instruction."
• The grammar is wrong. Of the four examples offered to show the passive, Pullum shows three contain no passive at all ("There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground").
• The anti-passive bias ignores information flow: a passive sounds bad when its subject is newer than the agent, and natural otherwise ("The bill was paid by an anonymous benefactor").
• Rules against starting with however, against which in restrictive clauses and for singular none are contradicted by the usage of respected writers.

Verdict: use Strunk's composition rules as prompts; ignore its grammar pronouncements; never enforce "no passives" mechanically.

Zinsser: clutter and simplicity

William Zinsser, On Writing Well (first edition 1976). The chapter "Simplicity" opens: "Clutter is the disease of American writing." His fix: "the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that is already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence." (Wording from the 1980 edition.)

Zinsser also insists that "Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident." Most clear sentences are rewrites.

Pinker: The Sense of Style

Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style (2014), is the best modern guide because it explains why prose is hard to read, using cognitive science rather than decree.

Classic style. Borrowed from Thomas and Turner's Clear and Simple as the Truth (1994). Pinker: "The guiding metaphor of classic style is seeing the world. The writer can see something that the reader has not yet noticed, and he orients the reader's gaze so that she can see it for herself." Writing is a window onto the world; writer and reader are equals in a conversation; the writer shows rather than argues about how hard the topic is.

The curse of knowledge. Pinker calls it "the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose": once you know something, you cannot easily imagine not knowing it. The term comes from economists Camerer, Loewenstein and Weber (1989). In Elizabeth Newton's 1990 Stanford study, people tapped the rhythm of well-known songs and predicted listeners would name about half; listeners named 2.5%. Symptoms in writing: undefined abbreviations, skipped steps, "obviously", examples that only make sense if you already understand.

Zombie nouns. Helen Sword's term ("Zombie Nouns", New York Times Opinionator, 23 July 2012) for nominalisations: verbs and adjectives turned into abstract nouns (investigate → investigation, decide → decision, able → ability). They drain the agent and the action from a sentence. Pinker describes the move as taking "a perfectly spry verb" and embalming it into a noun.

Metadiscourse is writing about the writing: "In this section I will discuss…", "As noted above…", "It is worth mentioning that…". A little signposting helps in long documents; most of it is throat-clearing. Pinker's alternatives: open with the question the section answers, or just state the point.

Hedging. Compulsive qualifiers (somewhat, arguably, to some extent, it could be said that) protect the writer, not the reader. Hedge once, precisely, where there is real uncertainty, and say how uncertain: "probably (we have three weeks of data)" beats "it may potentially be the case".

Plain language

The Plain Writing Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-274, signed 13 October 2010) requires US federal agencies to use "plain writing" in public documents, defined as "writing that is clear, concise, well-organized, and follows other best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience." The Federal Plain Language Guidelines (PLAIN, March 2011, revision 1 May 2011) turn that into practice; the material formerly on plainlanguage.gov now lives in digital.gov's plain language guides.

Plain language is not dumbing down. Experts read plain prose faster too, and nobody has ever complained that a specification was too easy to understand.

Structure

Structure matters more than sentences. A reader who knows where the argument is going forgives clumsy sentences; perfect sentences in the wrong order still fail.

BLUF comes from US military correspondence; the inverted pyramid from newspaper practice. Both exist because readers stop early.

Topic sentences and skimming

If a reader reads only the first sentence of each paragraph, they should get the argument. This "skim test" is the single most useful structural check.

Parallelism

Items in a list, a comparison or a series take the same grammatical form (Strunk's rule 15).

Lists vs prose

Bullets hide missing logic: three bullets can sit side by side without anyone stating how they relate. Bezos's 2004 email banning slides at Amazon's senior meetings made this point: "If someone builds a list of bullet points in word, that would be just as bad as powerpoint." Use lists for data, prose for reasoning.

Sentences

Active and passive voice

Active: subject does the action ("The deploy script deleted the table"). Passive: subject receives it ("The table was deleted", optionally "by the deploy script"). A passive needs a form of be (or get) plus a past participle; "There were leaves on the ground" and "The server is down" are not passives.

Strong verbs, fewer nouns

The action of a sentence belongs in its verb. Hunt for weak verbs (make, do, have, give, provide, perform, conduct, is) attached to action nouns.

Given-new and end focus

Readers process a sentence by linking its start to what they already know, then adding the new part (the "given-new" principle from Haviland and Clark's psycholinguistics research in the 1970s). English also puts emphasis at the end of a clause (Strunk's rule 18). Together: start with the familiar, end with the new or important.

Chains of given → new across sentences produce cohesion: each sentence picks up where the last one ended. Topic-hopping (every sentence starting with a new subject) feels choppy even when each sentence is fine.

Sentence length

There is no correct length; there is a correct variation. Uniform short sentences read like a telegram; uniform long ones exhaust working memory.

Positive, concrete, specific

Word choice

The table below is a working list. "Instead of" items are not banned; they are defaults to question.

Punctuation essentials

The Oxford comma is a style choice, not a rule. Chicago, the Google developer style guide and the Microsoft style guide use it; AP and many British newspapers generally don't. Pick one per document and use it consistently; add one anyway wherever omitting it creates ambiguity ("I thanked my parents, Ayn Rand and God"). The comma is not always trivial: in O'Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy (US Court of Appeals, First Circuit, 2017) a missing serial comma in a Maine overtime exemption decided the case in the drivers' favor.

Readability formulas

Formulas estimate difficulty from surface features: sentence length and word length (syllables). With $W$ = words, $S$ = sentences and $Y$ = syllables:

Flesch Reading Ease (Rudolf Flesch, 1948; higher is easier, roughly 0–100):

Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level (Kincaid and colleagues for the US Navy, 1975; approximate US school grade):

Worked example. A 100-word paragraph with 5 sentences and 150 syllables: $W/S = 20$, $Y/W = 1.5$, so $\text{FRE} = 206.835 - 20.3 - 126.9 \approx 59.6$ and $\text{FKGL} = 7.8 + 17.7 - 15.59 \approx 9.9$. Rewritten as 8 sentences with 135 syllables ($W/S = 12.5$, $Y/W = 1.35$): FRE $\approx 79.9$, FKGL $\approx 5.2$.

Other formulas (Gunning fog, SMOG, Coleman–Liau, Automated Readability Index) use similar inputs and give similar rankings.

Limits. Formulas were built on school texts and Navy manuals and measure proxies, not comprehension.

Use a formula as a smoke alarm (a grade of 16 on a customer email means something is wrong), never as a target. The real test is a reader: ask someone from the audience what the text says and what they would do next.

Editing process

Drafting and editing are different jobs. Draft fast without judging; edit slowly in passes, from large to small, because fixing words in a paragraph you will delete is wasted work.

1. Structure

   • Is the main point in the first paragraph (or the first line of an email)?
   • Does the order match the reader's questions?
   • Skim test: read only headings and first sentences. Does the argument survive?
   • Cut or move whole sections that don't serve the point.

2. Paragraphs

   • One idea each, stated in the topic sentence.
   • Each paragraph follows from the last; add the missing link where it doesn't.
   • Split paragraphs longer than about 6–8 lines on screen.

3. Sentences

   • Agent as subject, action as verb; convert zombie nouns.
   • Given before new; the important element last.
   • Vary length; split sentences with two main clauses joined by "and".

4. Words

   • Run the word-choice table: wordy phrases, hedges, weasels, jargon.
   • Replace vague adjectives with numbers or examples.
   • Same term for the same thing throughout.

5. Proofread

   • Names, numbers, dates, links, attachments.
   • Read aloud or with text-to-speech; stumbles mark bad sentences.
   • Last: spelling and punctuation (a spell-checker, then your eyes).

Common mistakes

Templates

Editing checklist

STRUCTURE
[ ] Main point stated in the first paragraph / first line
[ ] I can say the point in one sentence
[ ] Reader named; I know what they should do next
[ ] Headings + first sentences alone carry the argument
[ ] Every section serves the main point (else cut)
 
PARAGRAPHS
[ ] One idea per paragraph, stated first
[ ] Each paragraph follows from the previous one
[ ] No paragraph longer than ~8 lines on screen
 
SENTENCES
[ ] Agent is the subject, action is the verb
[ ] Zombie nouns turned back into verbs
[ ] Given before new; important words at the end
[ ] Passives only where they help
[ ] Sentence length varies; average around 15-20 words
 
WORDS
[ ] Wordy phrases, hedges, weasel words removed
[ ] Jargon defined or replaced for this reader
[ ] Vague adjectives replaced by numbers or examples
[ ] One term per concept, used consistently
 
PROOF
[ ] Read aloud once
[ ] Names, numbers, dates, links checked
[ ] Cut ~10% from the first draft

One-point paragraph

[Topic sentence: the claim, specific and testable.]
[Evidence: a number, an example, or a source.]
[Explanation: why the evidence supports the claim.]
[Consequence: what it means for the reader / what next.]
 
Example:
Onboarding loses 40% of sign-ups at email verification.
In September, 6,200 of 15,500 new accounts never clicked
the link. Most were on mobile, where the link opens a
different browser and loses the session. Letting users
verify with a six-digit code should recover about half.

BLUF status update

Subject: [Project] status: [on track / at risk / blocked]
         - [one-line headline]
 
BLUF: [One or two sentences: state, and what you need.]
 
Progress since [date]:
- [Outcome, not activity]
- [Outcome]
 
Risks / blockers:
- [Risk] - [impact] - [what we're doing / what we need]
 
Next: [what happens by when]
Ask: [specific request, owner, deadline] (or "none")

Explain-it-to-a-newcomer paragraph

[Term] is [plain one-line definition].
It matters because [consequence the reader cares about].
For example, [concrete instance with real names/numbers].
It is not [common confusion]; that is [the other thing].

References

• George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946) (opens in a new tab): the six rules and the four questions, text from the Orwell Foundation
• William Strunk Jr, The Elements of Style (1918), Project Gutenberg (opens in a new tab): Strunk's original rules, including rule 13, "Omit needless words"
• Geoffrey K. Pullum, "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice" (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2009) (opens in a new tab): the linguist's critique of Strunk and White, especially on the passive
• William Zinsser, On Writing Well (Harper & Row, 1976; later editions HarperCollins): clutter, simplicity, the nonfiction classic
• Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style (Viking, 2014): classic style, the curse of knowledge, zombie nouns, given-new
• Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner, Clear and Simple as the Truth (Princeton University Press, 1994): the source of "classic style"
• Helen Sword, "Zombie Nouns" (New York Times Opinionator, 23 July 2012) (opens in a new tab): the term for nominalisations
• Joseph M. Williams, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Pearson; many editions): characters as subjects, actions as verbs, old-before-new
• Plain Writing Act of 2010, Public Law 111-274 (opens in a new tab): the statutory definition of plain writing
• Digital.gov plain language guides (opens in a new tab): successor to plainlanguage.gov and the Federal Plain Language Guidelines (2011)
• Flesch–Kincaid readability tests (Wikipedia) (opens in a new tab): formulas, score bands and history
• Kincaid et al. (1975), Derivation of New Readability Formulas for Navy Enlisted Personnel (ERIC) (opens in a new tab): origin of the grade-level formula
• Paul Graham, "Writing, Briefly" (2005) (opens in a new tab): a one-paragraph writing method
• Paul Graham, "Write Simply" (2021) (opens in a new tab): the case for ordinary words and simple sentences
• Paul Graham, "Putting Ideas into Words" (2022) (opens in a new tab): writing as a test of what you know
• Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Scribner, 2000): the "minus 10%" revision rule
• Persuasive writing and technical writing: the companion sheets