Get the Name of the Dog

My task is, by the power of the written word, 

to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, 

before all, to make you see.

— Joseph Conrad

In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White pooh-pooh lazy writers—the majority—because they're so often satisfied with imprecision.

You see their slothfulness on display every day:

• "The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made."
  
  
• "The number of Americans diagnosed with 'broken heart' syndrome has steadily risen in the past 15 years."
  
  
• "Some records from The British Invasion in the mid-'60s can be very valuable."

By saying so little, sentences like these tax readers' minds. They squander readers' energy in guessing what the writer means to say.

Good writing avoids imprecision by drawing word-pictures.

Word-pictures comprise concrete details—specifics—that allow readers easily to imagine the world the writer seeks to depict. 

Anything less is filler. Eyewash. Baloney. Horse hockey.

• "The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made" merely tells you the writer likes this cowboy movie.

• "The number of Americans diagnosed with 'broken heart' syndrome has steadily risen in the past 15 years" merely tells you that incidents of a weird disease have increased.

• "Some records from The British Invasion in the mid-'60s can be very valuable" merely tells you there's demand for vinyl recordings by bands like Peter & Gordon.

Precision, on the other hand, would have told you, among other things, what distinguishes The Searchers from all the other hundreds of Westerns; how fast cases of "broken heart" are accelerating—and whether the disease affects a lot of people, or only a few; and which mop-top bands' records are hot.

Lazy writers favor the generic, as Victorian sociologist Herbert Spencer said in The Philosophy of Style; and, because they do, they always leave readers guessing. They should, instead, aim to produce "vivid impressions" with their words.

Writers should avoid, Spencer said, abstract sentences like "When the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the penal code will be severe." They should write instead "When men delight in battles, bullfights, and gladiatorial combat, they will punish by hanging, burning, and the rack."

Spencer calls the use of vivid word-pictures a "thorough maxim of composition."

Writing coach Peter Roy Clark calls Spencer's maxim "Get the name of the dog" (or the "Fido Theorem").

"Such was my affection for this writing strategy," Clark once told an interviewer, "I wanted to use it as a book title. 

"Anticipating the literalism of SEO, my publisher decided the title should reflect what the book was really about. In the end, Get the Name of the Dog became Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. 

"Get the name of the dog" does appear in Clark's Writing Tools as Tool Number 14. But it's much more important.

"It ranks as Number 1 in my heart," Clark said. "Every strategic move I’ve shared over 30 years derives its existence from the Fido Theorem. 

"'Get the name of the dog' stands, for me, for the whole. In other words, if the writer remembers to get the dog’s name, he or she will be curious enough and attentive enough to gather all the relevant details in their epiphanic particularity."

Got an email to write? A memo? A report? 

Get the name of the dog.