Clear Writing Quotes

Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?

Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple.

Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn't about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.

Less really is more. It's a tendency of beginning writers to want to prove what they're talking about by going too far with description. I think you've got to keep it short, crisp and clean.

Disorganizatio n is the enemy of good writing.

The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue... I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

Le Corbusier is an outstanding writer. His ideas achieved their impact in large measure because he could write so convincingly. His style is utterly clear, brusque, funny and polemical in the best way.

Anyone should be very suspicious of a sentence he's written that can't be read aloud easily.

I love the right words. I think economy and precision of language are important.

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

Be brief, be pointed, let your matter standLucid in order, solid and at hand;Spend not your words on trifles but condense;Strike with the mass of thought, not drops of sense;Press to close with vigor, once begun,And leave, (how hard the task!) leave off, when done.

But as I wrote the book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet], I tried to write it as clearly and directly and passionately as possible just thinking of communicating to readers who might want to learn about this great thinker and be inspired by him as I was.

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

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

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

Never mistake legibility for communication.

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

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.

No matter what any of the grammar teachers say, punctuation is an arbitrary matter. It should be used to make sentences clear.

It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.

A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.

The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.