The Business End of Your Pencil

One day when I was studying with Schoenberg,
he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said,
"This end is more important than the other."

— John Cage

It's one thing to praise brevity, another to achieve it. Brevity begins and ends with "chunks."

The basic chunk is the paragraph. 

Think of the paragraph as a form of punctuation. Just as sentences would be hard to read without commas, colons, and periods, writing would be hard to read without paragraphs.

As a rule, short paragraphs (like this one) are effective.

However, while writing short paragraphs can be a virtue, paragraphs need not be short to seem brief. They simply have to follow a proven, four-part formula:

1. First, get your thoughts down, even if they take the form a single paragraph.

2. Next, "chunk" your separate thoughts into separate paragraphs.

3. Then, polish your paragraphs:

• Make sure your topic sentence—establishing the main point of the paragraph—is up front.
  
  
• Make sure the topic sentence transitions from the prior paragraph. That means it begins with something familiar to your reader, namely, the idea last expressed at the end of the previous paragraph. 
  
  
• Shape the entirety of your paragraph so it progresses cohesively and coherently. Your sentences should flow one from another (that makes them cohesive) and at the same time link to a single topic—the one captured in your topic sentence (that makes them coherent). Whenever your sentences don't link readily to the main topic, introduce bullets or numbers, or simply begin a new paragraph. And don't bother writing a "summation" or "conclusion" at the end of your paragraph. Just leap to the next one.

4. Lastly, apply the business end of your pencil and revise. As you're doing so, be sure to express all your ideas with precision and to cut your words by a third, at least.

“Writing is revision,” as Tracy Kidder says.

Here's an example of a paltry paragraph—lacking a topic sentence, lacking cohesiveness, lacking coherence, lacking precision. It's short, but godawful:

London's weather had been unusual for September, so Londoners took advantage of it to linger in the parks and visit the popular department stores. Even though an occasional air-raid siren would sound, the barrage balloons that flew overhead provided them a sense of security. They also attended plays and went to "picture shows," seeing films like Rebecca, The Thin Man and Gaslight. Considering England was at war, Londoners on the whole were quite complacent.

Here's the same content in the hands of Erik Larson, a writer who knows the business end of a pencil (the passage is from his new best-seller The Splendid and the Vile):

The day was warm and still, the sky blue above a rising haze. Temperatures by afternoon were in the nineties, odd for London. People thronged Hyde Park and lounged on chairs set out beside the Serpentine. Shoppers jammed the stores of Oxford Street and Piccadilly. The giant barrage balloons overhead cast lumbering shadows on the streets below. After the August air raid when bombs first fell on London proper, the city had retreated back into a dream of invulnerability, punctuated now and then by false alerts whose once-terrifying novelty was muted by the failure of bombers to appear. The late-summer heat imparted an air of languid complacency. In the city’s West End, theaters hosted twenty-four productions, among them the play Rebecca, adapted for the stage by Daphne du Maurier from her novel of the same name. Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, was also playing in London, as were the films The Thin Man and the long-running Gaslight.

Tighten Your Spigot

Be silent for the most part; or say only

what is necessary and in few words.

― Epictetus

A phone call with a salesman this week reminded me why I dislike so many salespeople.

He would not shut up.

What should have been a 10-minute call wound up an hour-long harangue.

Citing the "Golden Ratio," sales coaches advise you to "talk less, listen more." The ratio of talk should be 3:2 in favor of the customer.  

But this guy isn't buying it.

And I may not buy what he's selling—simply because I can't take another drenching.

Worse, he followed the call up with a 600-word email (not including his two attachments). I've yet to read it all.

If only he knew about Star Style.

Ernest Hemingway mastered Star Style in 1917 during a seven-month apprenticeship at The Kansas City Star. It would propel the writer to fame only nine years later.

In a 1940 interview, Hemingway recalled how the paper's city editor taught him to write by demanding adherence to 110 rules. "Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing,'' Hemingway said. 

Foremost among them were three: Use short sentences. Use vigorous English. Eliminate every superfluous word.

Hemingway revered The Star's rules. "I've never forgotten them. No man with any talent can fail to write well if he abides by them."

Hemingway added to the rules one of his own, which in Death on the Afternoon he labeled the "Iceberg Theory."

"The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water," he wrote. 

"If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them."

The Greek Stoic Epictetus, 2,000 years before had urged followers to abide by comparable rules for speaking.

"Be silent for the most part; or say only what is necessary and in few words," Epictetus advised.

"Talk, but rarely, if occasion calls, and never about ordinary things—gladiators or horse races or athletes or feasts; these are vulgar topics; but above all not about men in blame or compliment or comparison. Turn the conversation, if you can, by talking about fitting subjects; but, should you be among strangers, be silent."

If you're prone to saying too much—in person or on paper—consider your audience. Show them some charity. Tighten your spigot. 

Maybe the Golden Ratio should be 9:1 in favor of the customer.

Maybe the gold in the Golden Rule is—silence.

Verbosity

Verbosity wastes a portion of the reader’s life.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In the midst of Britain's "darkest hour," Winston Churchill paused to write a one-page memo scolding his war cabinet ministers for verbosity.

"Clarity and cogency can be reconciled with a greater brevity," he told one of them. "It is slothful not to compress your thoughts."

That memo, entitled "Brevity," is one of Churchill's most famous.

It demanded that all ministers and their underlings avoid "officialese" in writing, and keep all memos brief—no more than a page long.

Brevity, Churchill promised, would save readers time—time better spent outsmarting their Nazi adversaries.

Churchill singled out pompous and clichéd gobbledygook as particularly wasteful.

"Let us have an end of such phrases as these: 'It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations,' or 'Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect,'" Churchill wrote. 

"Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational."

Brevity, Churchill promised, would not only save the government time, but "prove an aid to clear thinking."

Churchill was right, on both counts. 

Concise usually is precise—provided you avoid clichés.

I once had a boss who traveled a lot. 

When responding to draft sales copy or ideas and suggestions from me while she was out of town, she'd send me extremely concise emails.

But they consisted of nothing but clichés like "Off brand," Wait, what?'' and "Meh."

Concise, but not precise.

I always had to await her return to the office to learn what she expected me to do. 

She both wasted my time and set back my projects.

Clichés are fine when you have nothing but praise or approval to offer. "Lovin' it!" for example. "Good stuff!" Or, my favorite, "Boffo!"

Clichés are also fine when you can't help out. "Sorry, haven't a clue." "Sorry, not in my wheelhouse. "Sorry, no can do." (Churchill, for example, telegrammed FDR asking for help with the evacuation of Dunkirk. FDR replied simply, "Good luck.")

If you want to be a good boss or colleague—a helpful, thoughtful one—take the time to write concise, but precise, directions. 

"Ask Legal to review the entire contract one more time before you send it to the customer. The sales guy changed a lot of our boilerplate. Not sure that's kosher. Ask for it back within 24 hours."

"Make the subhead the major headline. It's stronger. And add a call to action."

"Ask Meghan whether she wrote code for another client that calculates shipping costs. You can just plug her code in. But be sure it can handle Euros."

In The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, Australian philosopher David Stove argued that verbosity is more than long-windedness and muddled thinking.

Verbosity reflects a grotesque "character defect;" a trait he calls "pathology of thought."

Verbosity, Stove says, signals "a simple inability to shut up; a determination to be thought deep; a hunger for power; and fear—especially fear of an indifferent universe."

I've certainly observed that character defect during my career.

The best bosses I've ever had were also succinct and enviable writers; the worst were inarticulate psychopaths who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. 

The memos they produced were long, flatulent and inscrutable. 

The next email you write, please, take a few moments to edit yourself. Kill the clichés. Get to the point. Be specific. Then trim every third word. 

Your reader will thank you. 

An Exercise in Gobbledygook

Anything is better than not to write clearly.

— Somerset Maugham

"Dear Neighbors," the 16-page letter begins.

The author, Jean Wodnicki, say she hopes to advise Champlain Towers residents of the "state of the building," because answering their pesky questions has become an annoyance and "all-consuming." 

The issue at hand: a repairs estimate for $15 million. The homeowners association, over which she presides, has almost no money.

Three long, boring paragraphs in, Wodnicki notes that the building's state is lousy and "has gotten significantly worse" since the estimate was received. 

It appears the pillars are "spalling."

I've read Wodnicki's letter—sent three months before last week's collapse of Champlain Towers South—and can only say don't ever send a letter like this.

Anything is better than not to write clearly.

Monday-morning quarterbacking is easy; but were I to have written Wodnicki's letter, I might have opened it like this:

Dear Neighbors,

We have talked for years about the need to repair our crumbling building. There's no more time for talk. Now is the time to proceed. The repair will cost $15 million. Because there is little cash on hand, all of us will have to pony up.

With the benefit of clairvoyance, I would have added a second lead-in paragraph:

Dear Neighbors,

We have talked for years about the need to repair our crumbling building. There's no more time for talk. Now is the time to proceed. The repair will cost $15 million. Because there is little cash on hand, all of us will have to pony up. 

If we don't pony up, 150 of us will be crushed to death in three months. That's painful—much more painful than finding the money.

Clairvoyance or not, I would have made sure the letter fit on one side of a piece of paper, and that readers understood by the close that the repairs must commence—immediately.

Jean Wodnicki's letter is an extended exercise in gobbledygook sandwiched in self-pity.

“An honest tale speeds best being plainly told," Shakespeare said.

Don't ever send a letter like this.

The Perfect Icebreaker

I’ll give you justice, I’ll fatten your purse, 

Show me your moral virtues first.

— Bob Dylan

A meeting I attend—online, of course—begins every week with an insufferable icebreaker, a long round of introductions the point of which is to clarify everyone's pronouns of choice.

Tell me, who was first responsible for virtue-signalling via pronouns? Because I'd like to murder him. Or her. Or them.

Want the perfect meeting icebreaker? "Everyone please tell us in four or five words what value you add."

Virtue-signalling via "inclusive" pronouns, I can assure, adds no value; in fact, it destroys value. My time's limited. Please don't waste it with pronouns, when you should be telling me how you justify your existence. I don't care that you might be "gender fluid." And I care less you're a hero of the "wokeing class." I just want to know why are you here?

Recall some grammar: personal pronouns substitute for a specific person or persons. The personal pronouns are: I, we, you, he, she, and they. 

Simple.

Recall also, there are indefinite personal pronouns; they substitute for no person specifically. The indefinite personal pronouns are: all, another, anybody, anyone, each, everybody, everyone, few, many, nobody, none, one, several, some, somebody, and someone.

Again, simple.

Virtue-signalling via pronouns—let's call them "PC pronouns"—screws with grammar—and your head. 

Worse yet, it promotes what philosopher Martin Heidegger called the "dictatorship of the they" (Diktatur des Man).

Heidegger believed that, when you use indefinite personal pronouns, you unconsciously surrender to what's socially acceptable—to what's PC.

When you refer to yourself as, say, "everybody" ("Everybody knows TikTock is stupid") you are surrendering your authentic self—your individuality—and submitting to an invisible authority, to the "dictatorship of the they." 

According to Heidegger, indefinite personal pronouns secretly control the masses.

PC pronouns do, too.

I'm not just my genitals. And I'm not just he or she or they or X. 

I'm Bob. The name is Bob. Bob James.

Who the hell are you?