Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.

We should not write so that it is possible for [the reader] to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

I think what's really hard is making sense and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

I wish my prose to be transparent—I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.

I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the reader will involve himself or herself.

Like with anything, good writing suggest itself pretty strongly.

The single most important lesson of effective communication is this: Focus on clarity. Concentrate on precisions. Don’t worry about constructing beautiful sentences. Beauty comes from meaning, not language. Accuracy is the most effective style of all.

No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

Plate glass... has no beauty of its own. Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside. That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned. Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between. I hope that is what is happening when you read this book

Multitudes of words are neither an argument of clear ideas in the writer, nor a proper means of conveying clear notions to the reader.

Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.

I see but one rule: to be clear.

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

The art of writing is not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind.

He that will write well in any tongue must follow this counsel of Aristotle: to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.