People tell me that I’m a good writer. Some do, anyway. I’m glad to hear it, but the statement baffles me. I don’t feel like a good writer. I don’t consider myself to be a linguistic maestro, artfully frolicking in language the way my wife notes I do in the context of math and numbers. I have, in fact, often represented that “language is my second language,” as I am more comfortable in domains like visual, spatial, mathematical, material, and observational domains—and interactions among these. Moreover, language is a discrete, logical construct that often gets in the way of genuine understanding: a crude tool next to the full contextual richness of the universe.
Perhaps related to this, it is a struggle for me to translate vague comprehensions into words, and I’m seldom satisfied with the result. I relentlessly edit my work, feeling like I’m never getting it quite right. If I were smarter, surely I could express this clumsy paragraph in a bumper-sticker-sized slogan. Anything I an able to conceive and thus might try to articulate can’t really be that challenging, conceptually. My clumsiness turns simple ideas into meandering screeds. At least that’s how I experience it.
Nonetheless, I get compliments about my writing often enough to have accepted that I must be doing something right, at least for some readers. Okay—that’s good. I wish I knew my secrets.
Well, it turns out that I do have practices—developed over time—that may be of value to others. I share them here.
Words to Avoid
I deliberately avoid the use of certain words wherever I can—sometimes running awkward circles in order to do so. Some of these may be surprising or not make sense, initially. But hey: you asked about my secrets (actually, you didn’t).
With
What? I avoid using “with?” How random/bizarre! What the hell is wrong with the word with? And see: I just used it there—twice! I view “with” as a weak, vague word. It’s a lazy word. It says: “these two items have some connection, but I don’t feel like specifying what it is, so I’ll leave it to you to work out.” Almost always, it is possible to be more explicit in defining the connection that “with” lamely attempts. “A car with red spots” is a car having red spots, or possessing red spots, or even a car sporting red spots. See how the relationship is more crisp? “With that in mind” becomes “Bearing/Keeping that in mind” (more active). “With all that is going on” is better as “Given all that is going on.” Seldom is “with” the best choice, in fact.
There Is
Also applying to similar constructs such as “there are,” “it is,” etc., this one drives me nuts—and is sometimes surprisingly difficult to replace. As in the case of “with,” I view this construct as one of laziness, and one that states the obvious. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that “there are” things. Yes: things exist. Congratulations: we live in a material universe. “There are people who think the world is flat” comes off better as “Some people hold the belief that…” The usual trick is to make the existing entity the subject of the sentence. Then clarify: what does it do? My mental image of “there are” (and apologies for its grossness) is that the writer just spontaneously regurgitated some half-chewed food onto the table, leaving you both staring at it in surprised disgust. “I had no idea that sort of mess existed.” “Yeah, well, there it is.” Chew it and digest the idea first before just putting it out there as something that just, well, is.
Things
I’m not terribly successful at this one, but I try to be more specific when I catch myself using “thing.” Now, the astute reader might object that I just used “things” in the previous section. Indeed I did! Notice that I wanted to sound dumb, poking fun at a lazy construct. Writing ought not be completely rigid, even if one holds general standards. Anyway, “Several things to consider” can become “several elements” or “several factors.” The thing to think about—I mean, the aspect of importance is the nature of the placeholder. Are they physical objects, like coins and paper wads? Are they ideas? Are they considerations? Then say so. When “thing” pops up in my drafts, I think about: what is that word describing and can I be more explicit about what sort of “thing” is hiding under the label? The word “stuff” rides in a similar boat.
Etc.
Some people hate seeing “etc.” in sentences, and might admonish the writer for being lazy and not spelling it out. I take this one with a grain of salt. I pause any time I use it and ask: is the list small enough that a little more effort on my part could develop the complete—or at least a more fully-representative—list? If the list is huge or obvious, I give myself a pass. I allowed myself to use it in the “There is” section because it’s not that difficult to work out other related constructs. Also, I don’t hesitate to write about mammals such as lions, tigers, bears, etc. I’m not going to list all the mammal forms, and it’s not hard to get the idea. However, if talking about something more obscure, like mechanisms for heat flow, it would not serve to say “convection, etc.” when one could say “convection, conduction, and radiation.” Or, if talking about ways you could get to work, rather than say “personal vehicle, bicycle, etc.” a little more effort might be “car, motorcycle, public transit, bicycle, or walking.” Public transit could be “bus, etc”. or better: “bus, commuter train, or the subway.” The key is: would a little bit of work offer greater value to the reader: requiring less effort on their parts to flesh out the options?
Formatting
How a jumble of words is arranged can matter a lot. What I try to do is achieve a flow that ports to my meat-brain with minimal confusion. If it is plain enough for me, it might serve well for others. Here are some guidelines I follow.
Complete Sentences
Perhaps I am guilty of subscribing to an overly-rigid structure for language, but I dislike gatherings of words posing as a sentence but lacking a clear subject/verb pair, or otherwise seeming like an orphaned fragment. End of story. Which is why I never do this. Period. Those last three are examples of constructions I avoid. If I really want to express those sentiments (note, I did not write “say those things”), I’ll find another way. Often that means joining elements with clever punctuation: perhaps a colon, semicolon, dash, parentheses, or—more rarely—ellipses. Note that I didn’t use “etc.” here, because I wanted to cover the space and actually be helpful—period.
The Glorious Em-dash
That last bit of advice brings me to my favorite trick. Dashes come in three basic flavors. This was driven home for me by cutting my writing teeth in LaTeX, where in the “source code” one types either a single, double, or triple dash. Single dashes are hyphens, for breaking a line (automatic) or joining a word-modifier (see!). Double dashes (in LaTeX) translate to an en-dash, so–named because the dash nominally carries the width of a lower-case “n.” It is used for ranges (like 6–8 children) or to connect concepts or elements like a push–pull transistor arrangement or Earth–Moon separation. The em-dash is the widest—as wide as a lower-case “m”—and sets a clause apart as if in parentheses. They make great constructs for expressing an aside, but maybe one too important to relegate to the parenthetical backwater. They are less “interruptive” to the flow of the sentence, I find. I don’t use spaces on either side of the em-dash, and use them liberally. I’m not going to claim that it’s the ideal way to write, but it’s what I do and people seem to appreciate my writing style. So, I don’t think I’m losing readers by using them.
Emphasis
The main tools are “quotes,” italics, bold, underline, or CAPS. I seldom use the last two, and use bold sparingly. Aside from quotation marks for, you know, actual quotes, they are used as “scare quotes” to emphasize the unusual, unconventional, or false quality of a word. Of these, I rely most heavily on italics. I learned to appreciate the art of effective emphasis from reading David Griffith’s clear physics textbooks. By placing emphasis in the right place, I could read a sentence as he would, and therefore more easily track his thought process. Good writing is about inviting someone to share what’s going on in your brain.
Avoiding Repetition
It can be hard to spot, but if I catch an instance where I have used the same word or construct in close proximity, I’ll work to fix it. The last sentence in the Etc. section initially had the word “work” twice, but I shifted the second occurrence to “effort.” Likewise, the previous paragraph initially ended in “thought process,” making for two sentences in a row ending that way. I make sure consecutive sentences don’t (often) repeat the same word, like “the,” “this,” “I,” or other common starts. Notice the “Likewise” a few sentences back to break up a double-The. I also find that I need to keep a close eye on my buts. A “but” usually reflects an abrupt change of direction. Put them too close together and the whip-saw effect can be disorienting to a reader: “does that mean we’re back to the original statement being valid?”
The more unusual the word, the farther they must be (or perhaps allow only one instance in a chapter-length piece or writing). Repetition of “fancy” words like erudite, ostentatious—and that seems to have exhausted my store—will be noticed even pages apart. Repetition can have the effect of making the piece feel less substantial: as if one key idea is repackaged multiple times. The main danger comes during editing, when I might inadvertently slip in the same word I used nearby (but a week before), without having carefully read the surrounding text before making the edit. I even avoid common words in the same sentence. “The larger-than-normal mouse felt entitled to run off with the largest piece of cheese” has all kinds of ways to enrich the sentence without wearing out the word “large” and its variants. Either the first or second instance can change. “The chunky mouse,” or “the most massive piece” are two of a host of changes that would work well.
Prepositional Endings
I will admit that I resent myself for heeding this convention. In speech, I’m sure I end sentences in prepositions all the time—among many other sins. When I catch myself ending a written sentence in a preposition, I correct it—cursing on the inside. “A better story to be in” becomes the more awkward and snobby “A better story in which to be.” If I hate the convention so much, why do I “correct” it? Well, this gets at something I learned as a writer and reviewer of scientific proposals for millions of dollars.
When the stakes are high, it pays to be professional, and to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable and capable enough to comply with convention. You really don’t want a reviewer who cares more about grammar than you do—however pedantic that might be—saying “Why should I entrust $1.5M to this joker when he can’t even master grammatical conventions?” [Note that I started to write “trust this guy with” and then quickly pivoted to a better construction using “entrust.”] The same goes for punctuation inside quotes. I don’t necessarily like it, but if the world is composed of two kinds of people—those who know the rules and those who don’t—I’ll offend far fewer people if I cater to those who are “in the know.” I noticed to my great surprise that I, myself (a hillbilly descendant), became particular about writing quality in proposals that I reviewed. Poor writing eroded my trust in the quality of the team, and their likelihood of success at performing a very difficult task. Attention to detail is an important quality to demonstrate in such contexts. I feel like I have betrayed my roots, but so be it.
The Main Trick
These minor conventions aside, the primary struggle I face in writing is to be clear. That’s really 90% of what I’m laboring to do. The end product might look effortless, but a lot of paddling under the surface is what produces the smooth glide one sees on the surface. [The previous sentence tempted me to say “there’s a lot of paddling…” and also had two instance of “smooth” at first.] I am positive I don’t always succeed. No matter how many editing passes I have made, I am incapable of reading an essay of mine without making multiple tweaks (or cringing when it’s too late).
The central question I ask of every sentence, paragraph, and section is: does this communicate my intent both accurately and sensibly? I often read multiple times wearing different hats: a high-school student; a professor colleague; a family member; a friend. “Did I just lose them there?” Writing that comes off as someone trying to impress is a real turn-off for me. If I work hard enough to wade through the obscure language, I can usually repackage the entire sentiment far more compactly and clearly. Why didn’t they just do that in the first place, if they understood the concept. Oh, right—then I would not have been intimidated by their obvious intellectual prowess. But, it tends to backfire when I’m the recipient.
I once gave a colloquium talk at the University of Colorado about my lunar laser ranging project. In the audience were two pioneers of the technique (Pete Bender and Jim Faller), as well as two or three Nobel laureates and the eight-year-old son of my host. When members of all three groups told me it was the best talk they had seen in some time, I knew I had achieved my goal. But what I was most proud of was that I was able to make it accessible to an eight-year-old, while not patronizing the elites. “Does this make sense to almost anybody” is not a bad metric.
Another insight I once had came after presenting a physics department colloquium at my alma mater, Caltech. Luminaries like Kip Thorne, Roger Blandford, and Peter Goldreich were in the audience, and I was giving a talk on gravity, for gods’ sake. It was surely pedestrian/elementary to them, but they appreciated a clear talk all the same. Why? Well, I had just delivered a talk that all their (dumb?) colleagues could follow, which translates to greater appreciation for their line of work within a sometimes-competitive department. I can tell you that I’ve had warmer feelings toward my condensed-matter colleagues, for instance, after being able to follow a talk in their field than the grumbles that otherwise result from an overly-specialized seminar that only the top practitioners in the field could follow. The lesson: don’t try to impress those you believe to be smarter than yourself. You may very well be right, and the strategy will probably fall flat. They’ll be more impressed by a talented communicator than by someone putting on airs.
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