If you have ever listened to a classical singer talking about his or her career or a musical expert discussing this art form, you may have been struck by a tendency to refer to "the voice." Not my voice, your voice, his or her voice, but simply "the voice," as in "when Maria Callas made this recording, the voice was still in its prime." It is a strangely impersonal way of speaking. It makes it sound as if the vocal organ in question has a life of its own, independent of its possessor.Whatever the precise reasons why musicians use that term, it is possible to see some sense in it. Even an ordinary person's singing voice may be somewhat different from his or her speaking voice, which we usually take to be his or her natural voice. There is nothing very surprising in that, for singing is a different activity from speaking. It requires you to pitch and project your voice deliberately, whereas speaking usually requires no conscious intervention, you simply open your mouth and speak as you were born to.Just as everyone has a singing voice—good or bad, musical or unmusical—so everyone has a writing voice. And your writing voice relates to your natural speaking voice in much the same way as your singing voice does. It may not seem to you that you write differently from the way you talk. You have probably been told at some time or other that you should "write as you talk" and perhaps have followed that advice. Nevertheless, like it or not, there is probably a qualitative difference between the way you express yourself on paper and the way you express yourself by word of mouth.To take an obvious example, unless you deliberately break them up, your words on paper will appear to come out in a continuous flow. There will be no little stops, hesitations, or coughs, no pauses while you search for the right word, no unintentional repetitions, no tailings off when you conclude a speech with a shrug of the shoulders or some other gesture. It may sound as if this refers only to the voice of the final version, from which all the little errors and infelicities have been removed, but this is not entirely the case. Just because writing, like singing, is less of a taken-for-granted activity than speaking and because it involves more deliberate effort, most people find that they are more "literate" when they use the written word. A sort of automatic politeness to paper kicks in when they are using a keyboard or pen.Now, writing has certain obvious disadvantages compared with speaking that mainly have to do with the writer's comparative remoteness from the person whom he or she is addressing. The absence of the stops, hesitations, coughs, and gestures, referred to in the previous paragraph is, in fact, one of them. We are frequently told by psychologists and experts in human communications that a vast percentage of what we communicate is conveyed by other means than the words we utter, yet when we write, the words we put down are all we have. It is always possible to read between the lines, but that requires more subtlety perhaps than picking up the signals transmitted by someone's body language.On the other hand, writing has one inestimable advantage that flows from the same source. Because we are not face to face with the addressee, we can perfect what we say before we commit to it. Through careful writing and thorough revision, we can ensure that what we say is only what we mean to say and conveys our message clearly. Furthermore, we can choose the voice we use.It is perfectly possible to write as if you were someone completely different from the person you really are. Creative writers do it: They can tell their story from the point of view of any one of their characters, and to do this they temporarily adopt the personality of that character not only by expressing his or her attitudes but by using the sort of language and style that he or she might naturally be expected to use. Advertising copywriters do it: They usually strive to come across as the most energetic, empathetic, and enthusiastic characters on earth. Politicians do it—or their speechwriters do. You too can do it, if you are so minded. Sheltered behind the computer screen, you can put on any mask you choose.This is not, however, intended as an argument in favor of insincerity, deception, or impressing other people by stealth. Most likely you will simply want to be yourself, but, as has been said, your writing voice is never quite the same as your natural voice, and you can and should exploit that little gap in at least two ways. You should deliberately adjust what you write to suit the person or people you are writing for, and you should select a tone that is appropriate to the circumstances.Adjusting to the ReaderA piece of writing is only ever as good as its ability to be understood by its readers. Sadly, this statement belongs not only in the category of obvious truths but also in that of frequently and unjustly neglected ones.The terms of reference of this book prevent an extensive discussion of matters of writing style. For that you should consult its companion volume, The Facts On File Guide to Style. It can be said, however, that the first rule of style always was and still is "Be clear." There is an important corollary to that rule, however, that particularly concerns us here. Clarity lies ultimately in the eye of the reader, not in the eye of the writer.It is not enough that a sentence or paragraph makes perfect sense to you; it must make sense to the reader, too, who will not be able to ask you to explain in more detail a sentence, idea, or section that remains unclear to him or her. Most readers are not blessed with infinite patience, either. They want your meaning to be immediately obvious. They may put up with a certain amount of obscurity in a poem or a piece of literary or philosophical prose; it is the price the ordinary mortal has to pay for a great mind's profundity. Readers also may be resigned to not fully understanding something written on a technical or academic subject that they know little about. But if they find that a piece of workaday prose requires the same degree of mental effort to understand it as they might normally expend on a crossword clue or a passage in a foreign language, they are apt to get exasperated—and with good reason.It follows that if possible, you ought to identify your readers and gauge their likely level of understanding. If you are writing for publication, the publisher will certainly want to know what market you envisage for your work. If you offer a book on a scientific subject, say, the publisher would expect to present your material differently depending on whether your proposed work was targeted for professional scientists, high school students, children in elementary school, or the general public. It is obviously pointless trying to sell a book written for high-level experts to schoolchildren. It is equally pointless to try to persuade a local newspaper to print an article that really belongs in an academic journal.The same, however, applies to work that is not written for publication. If you are writing about a business matter to a colleague in the same line of work, whom you can expect to be familiar with the intricacies of the trade, you should take a different approach to the task from the one you would take if you were writing on the same subject to an ordinary member of the public. Similarly, if you are writing to someone you have never met, your tone will differ from the tone you use with someone you know, let alone with an old friend.There are occasions when you cannot specifically identify a reader, when you actually want what you write to be read by as many people as possible. The great American public, you hope, is out there eagerly awaiting the appearance of your work. It may be that the public has already shown its appreciation of your quirky and original style by buying your previous work in large quantities. If you are cold-calling the public, however, the obvious style to adopt is a plain, neutral style (neutral, as will be explained in a later subsection, does not necessarily mean your writing should be colorless or impersonal) that will be understandable by and acceptable to the majority of people. It is what we might call a "default" style of writing for use in most circumstances, and especially when the reader is anonymous.ClarityWriting clearly is not entirely easy, but neither is it particularly difficult. The requirements for clarity, essentially, are the following:- What you write should be grammatically correct and conform to normal usage. Grammar is not an esoteric science. It is the foundation of our use of language—a common factor, as are the words that make up our vocabulary. Grammatical errors cause obscurity, not to mention the fact that they usually create an unfavorable impression of the writer.
- The vocabulary and constructions you use should be as simple and straightforward as they can be without distorting your meaning. This does not mean that everything you write should be couched in words of only one or two syllables. It does mean, however, that when you have a choice between a simple word and a long and complicated word that mean the same thing, you should, as a rule, choose the simpler one.
- You should always be aware that the reader's knowledge and vocabulary is not necessarily as extensive as your own. This does not mean that you should talk down to your reader. But it does mean that you should not assume the reader has done the same amount of preparation and research of the topic as you have. You should therefore be very careful about the use of specialized vocabulary.
As a result of its history and development, the English language is particularly rich in synonyms, different words that have essentially the same meaning. (It is perhaps no accident that the crossword puzzle was an English-language invention; the first newspaper crossword was published in a Sunday supplement to the New York World in 1913.) Although such words are usually almost interchangeable in meaning—incarceration, for example, means the same thing as imprisonment, just as prestidigitation equates to conjuring, azure to sky blue, cogitate to think over, and festinately to in haste—they are not the same in tone. The first words in each of the above pairs are more formal, literary, and even pretentious than their equivalents, and, more to the point, they are rarer in occurrence and less well known. While it would be wrong to deprive anyone of the pleasure of unearthing long-forgotten grandiose words, it would be equally wrong to suggest that a collector's interest in words has very much to do with the ordinary business of writing. Always choose the simpler word if it expresses your meaning just as well, and always choose the simpler construction, too. Try to avoid a pileup of phrases or clauses, as in:Previous to the last meeting of the committee, in view of the circumstances obtaining at that time, of which you were all informed beforehand by letter in accordance with standing orders and because I thought I owed you a personal explanation notwithstanding your general hostility toward me, which was a large factor in the circumstances referred to above, I tendered my resignation…. This is a great deal of rambling language with a tiny bit of significant content included at the end. If you find yourself writing a sentence such as this one—it can happen to any of us in an unguarded moment—do not let it get away from you. Make sure you get to the point quickly, then unravel the rest of the information and present it in a simpler and clearer form. Often this will mean creating two or three sentences out of one:I tendered my resignation before the last committee meeting. I informed you all of my decision beforehand by personal letter, as I was bound to do by standing orders and common courtesy. Your general hostility toward me was, as you know, a major factor influencing my decision…. Also avoid the use of specialized vocabulary, unless it is pertinent to your text. Slang falls in this category, because, by definition, slang is the language of an in-group. The in-group may be fairly large—all the people who came of age during a particular decade—or it may be comparatively small—all the people who work in the acting profession. Nevertheless, it remains an in-group, from which large sections of the population are excluded. This is what disqualifies slang—not its raciness or its tendency to date with great rapidity. There are obviously exceptions to this rule. You may be writing to or for other members of an in-group. You may feel the reader will get a special buzz from hearing the authentic voice of the young and cool or the hands-on professionals. You might want to individualize a fictional character by giving him or her an appropriate slang to speak. Nevertheless, for general, middle-of-the road intelligibility, avoid it.Colloquial language is a slightly different matter. By definition, most members of the population are likely to be familiar with it. The question of whether to use colloquialisms, however, relates mainly to the kind of tone you wish to adopt and is therefore dealt with in the following subsection on tone.From the point of view of this discussion, what we ordinarily think of as technical and specialist vocabulary has a great deal in common with slang. It should be used with care because large sections of the population will be unfamiliar with it. It is very important, therefore, to know who your readers are likely to be if you have to write on a specialized subject. If you are a psychologist, paleontologist, or campanologist addressing your remarks to colleagues, then you are entitled to use freely the technical terminology of the science or art in question. If you are writing for the general public, however, you are not. It is a basic courtesy to the reader not to send him or her off to search in the dictionary when it can be avoided. If you are compelled to use a technical term, because no alternative word exists or because the technical term is effectively a piece of useful shorthand, then provide the reader with a brief explanation, which can be direct or indirect, the first time you use the word. For example,A sphygmomanometer, the device doctors usually use to measure a patient's blood pressure, can often be adapted to serve this further purpose. or,The line "And quench its speed in the slushy sand" is obviously intended to be onomatopoeic. Browning chooses his words to suggest the sound made by a small boat burying its prow in wet sand. The same rule applies if you need to use words from a foreign language. It is customary to put the foreign terms in italics. Her attitude is perhaps best summed up by the French term je-m'en-foutisme: She couldn't care less about anything or anybody. Abbreviations and acronyms—with the possible exception of the very common ones that more or less everyone is certain to recognize (UN, UK, LA, NYC, NFL)—should also be explained on their first appearance:Members of the ANA (the American Nurses Association) are holding their annual conference in Cleveland, Ohio, this year. Few writers actually set out to blind their readers with science; many, however, end up doing so because of a blind spot of their own. We are quick to recognize the difficulty of language from outside our own sphere of competence, but we expect everybody else to share our knowledge of our own specialties. It is a common experience in daily life to be baffled by an expert who rattles off an explanation of why the car's engine is not working, or why the computer has crashed, in terms that mean very little to us as lay people. There are obvious difficulties in writing about subjects in which we are not expert. There are also dangers, however, if we write for the general public as experts on our own subject, unless we pay very careful heed to the needs of our readership. This requires a leap of the imagination. We must attempt to put ourselves in our readers' shoes by imagining the sort of terms we would wish to be explained to us if the roles were reversed. Without treating members of the public as imbeciles or encumbering them with unnecessary explanations, we should not overtax their resources. It can be quite a difficult balancing act. This is where a candid friend, preferably one who does not share your specialties, can be an invaluable assistant. Ask him or her to read through your text for intelligibility. If your friend starts looking puzzled, take action.ToneTone in writing is similar to tone of voice. It expresses the attitude or emotion of the person writing. It is not difficult to express emotion in writing or to cause emotion in a reader. We can all think of pieces of writing that have seemed unbearably sad and made us want to weep or terribly funny and made us laugh out loud. On the other hand, it is not entirely easy. A simple sentence such as "Bring me my slippers, please" can be invested with various kinds of emotion in speech: It could be an imperious command or a gentle request. On paper it remains obstinately neutral unless it is accompanied by an explicit reference to the tone or context in which the words are used:"Bring me my slippers, please," she said in an icy voice. It is, however, a fair assumption that most of what you write will be reasonably neutral in tone. You may, obviously, have occasion to write in an angry, complaining, enthusiastic, or affectionate tone in a letter or some other relatively short piece of writing—a review of a book or movie that you love or hate, for instance. But it would be difficult to sustain a strong emotional tone page after page after page—and it would probably be rather wearing for the reader.A neutral tone is the broad middle ground in writing. It implies that the writer is using ordinary language, neither deliberately familiar nor deliberately highfalutin, without a strong emotional charge and without striving for special effect. It is the natural tone to adopt for conveying information, especially to nonspecialists, or for stating a case without pressuring the reader to accept your point of view. The word neutral, and the accompanying adjective ordinary, used above, however, may give the impression that such writing must be at best unexciting and at worst positively boring. That is a false impression and perhaps arises from a misconception of what writing is primarily about.What is more important, the ideas and information that you have to communicate or the words you use to communicate them? In the vast majority of cases it will be the ideas and information. You do not want your words to call attention to themselves if in doing so, they distract the reader's attention from the message you are attempting to put across. Your words may cause distraction if they are ill-chosen, ungrammatical, or inadequate to the task, but they may do the same if they are self-consciously showy. If you had a rare and valuable object to display, would you put it in a transparent glass case or behind a stained glass window? Obviously, you would do the former. That, in the end, is the effect that neutrality in tone and language is intended to have. It is like a transparent envelope through which your ideas show clearly. To avoid boring your reader, ensure first that your material is interesting; stylistic considerations come second.Formality and InformalityThe great advantage of the middle ground is that you can easily move out of it in any direction, toward greater formality or informality. A brief discussion of what is meant by these two terms in writing is in order here.Formality implies a choice of more elevated vocabulary than usual and a stricter adherence to conventions, both grammatical and social. Informality implies the opposite: a more colloquial vocabulary, greater freedom with conventions, and, generally a greater closeness to the way most people use language in speech. These categories are not firmly fixed, and there is perhaps a tendency for the neutral tone to become more informal; nevertheless, they retain their usefulness.As an example of the differences between the three, let us take a phrase from the previous paragraph:… a greater closeness to the way most people use language in speech. If that may be taken as representing the neutral level, a more formal expression of the same idea might be the following:… a closer approximation to the language of common speech. This more formal version uses fewer words and no verbs. It is neater and more trenchant in some respects, but it depends on the reader's understanding the word approximation in a sense other than the one in which it is most frequently used. Here it combines the sense of "closeness" and the sense of "approach" and does not mean a "rough equivalent." The reader must also understand that the word common is not intended to be in any way insulting. (Though "common speech" still seems to imply that the writer is commenting on things from a position of lofty authority.)An informal version, on the other hand, might read… getting closer to how people actually talk. This version dispenses with a noun and preposition combination ("closeness to"/"approximation to") in favor of the verb phrase "getting closer to," which for many people, especially traditionalists, would be considered informal simply because it contains the all-purpose word get. It also substitutes talk for the slightly more formal speak. In fact, it does what it says: It is probably closer to what most people would say.Informal writing would allow the use of contracted verb forms, such as can't, won't, would've, and so on. These are probably the most obvious sign of an informal tone. In neutral and formal writing these forms should always be written out in full: cannot, will not, and would have. Informally, you might write "I can't help thinking …"; neutrally, this would become "I cannot help thinking …"; formally, it might evolve into "I cannot but think …"The issue of strict grammatical correctness can occasionally cause problems with tone:Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar? Not I! "Not I" is, of course, grammatically correct, but very few people would ever say it, if they were asked such a question spontaneously in a real-life situation. If you are writing informally, there is no problem; you write "Not me!" which is what most people would say. If you are writing formally, there is no problem either; you write "Not I!" If you are trying to keep to the middle ground, this may make you stop and think. Do you write "Who did you talk to at the party?" or "To whom did you talk at the party?" Do you write "No matter who you ask, the answer is always the same" or "No matter whom you ask, the answer is always the same"?In both cases the second alternative is the grammatically correct one, and although you may sometimes feel you are being taken to a slighter higher level of formality than you are entirely comfortable with, you should obey the rules. Your writing voice, as was said earlier, is a different thing from your speaking voice, and it will be a somewhat more formal one. An exception may, however, be made for reported speech and dialogue, which should be placed within quotation marks. If you quote people talking, then let them talk as they talk.When deciding whether to adopt a formal, informal, or neutral tone, it is again important to know your reader. The previous discussion of writer-reader relations focused mainly on intelligibility and involved an implicit assessment of the reader's intelligence level. In deciding whether to take an informal or formal tone, you have to assess the state of your personal relations with the reader and, more broadly, what degree of formality your reader is likely to feel most comfortable with, and to expect, in communications. Alternatively, there are conventions governing certain types of writing that will dictate the tone you choose. If, for example, you received a formal invitation of the typeMr. and Mrs. Alphonse T. Booker request the pleasure of the company of Mr. Noel Brooks and Ms. Lucia Hernandez at … you might, if you were best friends of Mr. and Mrs. Booker, write back, "Hi, thanks, great, we'll come." On the whole, however, you are more likely to respond in kind:Mr. Noel Brooks and Ms. Lucia Hernandez thank Mr. and Mrs. Alphonse T. Booker for their kind invitation to … and are delighted to accept. Similar conventions apply to certain kinds of essays, reports, and business correspondence.By and large, however, communications are becoming more informal. If there are any conventions governing the exchange of e-mails—not to mention text messages—they all tend toward informality. We equate informality with friendliness, naturally enough, and want to put at ease the people we are corresponding with, so we usually write informally. We also, perhaps, want to show that we are ordinary, good-natured, unpretentious folks, and this too inclines us to informality. Finally, we are all pressed for time, and it is less troublesome to write something without particular regard for the finer points of grammar and language use.Informality is fine in its proper place, which is, principally, in personal letters or other communications to friends or people we know quite well and in certain kinds of advertising copy and journalism. It can jar the reader, however, when it is used out of place. It is usually not appropriate to academic writing, letters to people we do not know well, and most writing that is directed at a large anonymous readership. For these situations, indeed, for most writing tasks, the neutral tone is preferable.Personal Pronouns for AuthorsPeople sometimes feel anxious about how to refer to themselves when they are writing. They are not quite sure which is the proper personal pronoun to use to represent the authorial voice when expressing an opinion, for example, or referring the reader to a particular part of the text. There are three possible alternatives: to use I, to refer to yourself as we, or to avoid the use of a personal pronoun altogether as much as possible.When a piece of work is written by a single author, there is no compelling reason not to use I: "… as I mentioned in the previous chapter"; "I should now like to broaden the discussion and consider two further points"; "In my opinion, neither of the two authors to whom I referred in the previous paragraph makes a convincing case for abolition." There is no convention that stipulates that a single author should refer to himself or herself as we. Individual authors sometimes use we as an act of self-effacement or to suggest that an impersonal authority is somehow responsible for the organization of the book and for its content, but this sounds rather old-fashioned nowadays. Too-frequent use of I should be avoided, as it should in a letter, where a succession of sentences all beginning "I did this …" and "I think that …" can give an impression of self-centeredness. This difficulty can usually be overcome by more imaginative sentence construction. A moderate use of I is entirely unobjectionable.When a work has more than one author, the use of we is entirely appropriate. Some caution may be necessary to ensure that it is always obvious which we is being referred to. As it does in this book, we can be used to include the author(s), the reader(s), and possibly the rest of the human race. If we means the authors in most of the text, it is probably best to find some other way of being more inclusive.If you dislike the use of any personal pronoun, then you can employ the passive voice and impersonal constructions to the same effect: "as mentioned in the previous paragraph …"; "as will be demonstrated in the next chapter …"; "at this point the discussion should be broadened to include two further points"; "It is fair to say that neither of the two authors referred to in the previous paragraph makes a convincing case for abolition." The only disadvantage of this method is that passive verbs can appear awkward and long winded: "It has several times been commented on in the course of this essay that there is a tendency to exaggerate on the part of this author…." If you are using this convention, check carefully that your sentences are not straggling, and prune them if necessary: "This author's tendency to exaggerate has been commented on several times in the course of this essay…."One final point should perhaps be made with respect to personal pronouns. The use of the pronoun one is generally relegated to more formal writing. It is not at all a good idea for an author to use it as a way of referring to himself or herself, because it sounds self-important: "One's space is limited, so one must forego the opportunity to comment further on this issue." It would be a pity, however, to lose the option of using this pronoun in its common generalizing sense of "people in general" or "anyone" or "I myself and other like-minded people," as in, "If one has nothing useful to say, then one had far better stay silent" or "But all one's efforts may be of no avail."At least from the informal to neutral level, the use of you in this sense is now more usual and is generally acceptable. As with the use of we, however, care should be taken to make it clear to the reader that he or she is not being directly addressed. A sentence such as "If you have nothing useful to say, you had far better stay silent" sounds, without more context, as if it is being directed at someone in particular.
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