It should be immediately obvious why clarity is foremost among the stylistic virtues. Its importance derives from the very nature of communication, "a process," to quote the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, "by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior." If your aim is to exchange information with another individual or to convey information to another individual, and you and the person you are communicating with possess a common system of symbols, then only a lack of clarity in the information that is conveyed or in the way the relevant system of symbols (in this case, the English language) is used to convey it can prevent communication from taking place. If you want your reader or hearer to understand what you are saying, be clear. If you have important information to put across, be clear. Since the system of symbols you are using is a shared one, you have a reasonable right to expect the recipient of your message to be able to understand it. Nevertheless, the onus is first and foremost on you, the creator and deliverer of the message, to ensure that it is received correctly, so, again, be clear.The importance of clarity may be obvious, but, as is generally the case, achieving clarity is not an entirely simple process. To begin with, there are three aspects to clear communication. The first is that you should be clear about what you want to say. The second is that you should be clear in the way that you say it. The third, as was indicated in the final sentence of the previous paragraph, is that you should take care that what appears clear to you will be equally clear to the person who receives the message.At the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War of 1853–56, the commander of the British forces, Lord Raglan, from his position on a hilltop, could see that the Russians had captured some cannons and were in the process of removing them from the battlefield. He sent an order to his cavalry, who were drawn up in the valley below, to attack the Russian raiding party and prevent them from removing the guns. Lord Raglan was quite clear about what he wanted to say, and, making allowances for battlefield conditions, his order probably stated quite clearly what he wanted to be done. Unfortunately, he failed to take into account that, down in the valley, the cavalry commander could not see the guns that the raiding party was removing. The only guns that the cavalry commander could see were the Russian batteries massed at the farther end of the valley. Those were the guns he charged, and the result was one of the most famous disasters in military history. Fortunately, a similar lack of empathy on the part of the ordinary writer is unlikely to lead to a catastrophe as spectacular as the Charge of the Light Brigade, but the incident is worth remembering. Clarity, we might say, is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.Being Clear about What You Want to SayThe effort to achieve clarity, like several of the other procedures involved in the pursuit of style, should begin well before you arrive at the point of picking up a pen or switching on the computer. To write clearly, you have to be able to think clearly. It stands to reason that if you are not clear in your own mind about what you want to say, you will likely be unable to convey a clear message to your reader.Unfortunately, not everyone's thoughts flow as clear as a crystal spring. It is all very well to instruct somebody to think clearly, but, in the end, you might just as well instruct that person from the outset to write brilliantly. Neither clear thinking nor brilliant writing is automatically within the power of any given person on any given day, so arrangements have to be made to deal with human frailty and to cover those periods when your thoughts do not present themselves in a logical sequence.The keys to achieving clarity about what you want to say are (1) to recognize that thinking is an integral part of the writing process, (2) to give yourself time to think, (3) to know the purpose for which you are writing, (4) to organize in a logical way the material that you intend to use in writing your piece, and (5) to make a plan. The final point is perhaps the most important of the five.A fuller account of the preliminary stages of the writing process is given in The Facts On File Guide to Good Writing. They will, therefore, be dealt with only briefly here, but the summary treatment should not be taken as an indication that the preliminaries are not important. On the contrary, you can save yourself a great deal of time and effort by making adequate preparations in writing as in any other activity. Readers who are interested in style, of course, may be expected to focus their attention on the act of writing and to derive most of their enjoyment from the creative task of assembling a well-written text. However, efficiency is as important to a writer as to anyone else who is not blessed with unlimited time. Professional writers know only too well that deadlines have to be met and that it is rare for them to have the luxury of spending a whole day on crafting one sentence, as some famous writers of the past are said to have done (in most cases, no doubt, after they were already famous and were assured of a reasonable income from their writing or from some other source). If you can deal efficiently, with the basic aspects of your task, you will gain precious time that you can spend on the more pleasurable or sophisticated aspects. Moreover, and more important, it is a mistake to believe that you are only being creative when you are actually putting down words on paper. The novelist or dramatist is being as creative when he or she is working out the plot of the story and deciding which character to introduce when and where, as when writing dialogue for that character. Construction is a creative activity, and the basic work of construction needs to be done in most cases before actual writing commences.Preparing to WriteAllow yourself time to think, and if you are working on an overall writing schedule, be sure to incorporate some thinking time into it. Allow yourself space to think, as well as to write. It is much easier to accomplish these tasks if you can free yourself, however temporarily, from other distractions—and other distractions, first and foremost, means other people. Every writer needs a den.Once you have acquired time and space to think, you first need to think about what precisely you are setting out to write. Before you can know what you are going to say, you have to know what you are trying to do. It is often recommended that a writer provide himself or herself with a "mission statement," a sentence or two setting out very succinctly what he or she intends to achieve. If you think a mission statement would help you, then imagine perhaps that you are intending to sell your writing to a very impatient publisher who will allow you no more than three sentences to state what type of book it is, what it is about, and who you expect to want to read it. Write down those three sentences and keep them beside you as you progress, so as to ensure that you stay on track.Whether or not you write an actual mission statement, you will need to devote some time and effort to clarifying your purpose. If you intend to write a piece of any length, you will almost inevitably need to collect material from outside sources; indeed, you may need to do extensive research. The more precise your purpose, the more goal oriented you can be in assembling your material. In practice, of course, it often happens that you begin with a general or even only vague idea of what you want to write: A title for an assignment, for instance, may lend itself to treatment in a variety of ways, and you may not immediately be able to fix on precisely the treatment that you wish to give it or are best able to give it. It may be that only as you begin to collect material, or to read up on a subject, do you suddenly hit upon the best method of tackling your assignment. If that happens you may have to reorient your approach, perhaps discarding some of the work you have already done. But this is a small price to pay for the supreme benefit of knowing where you are going so that you can begin to plan how to get there.In accordance with the general aim of keeping both your internal and external environments in the best possible state to promote clear thinking, it pays to take clear notes and to keep your notes in good order. (For more specific advice on note taking, refer to The Facts On File Guide to Good Writing.) Ideally you will start to form a rough plan of the work you are going to write once you conceive the basic purpose of the written work. As you collect your material, therefore, you will organize it not simply in alphabetical order or by subject categories, say, but in a manner that fits in with your plan, allocating evidence or backup to the points you know you are going to make in process of fulfilling your overall purpose.As has been said before, not everyone's thoughts flow clearly, and likewise, not everyone is sufficiently well-organized to sort and allocate notes as they are made, but there comes a time when, if you are to achieve clarity in the final product, you have to bring some clarity into your thoughts. And if you have been unable to do this earlier, then you should make an all-out attempt to do it when you make your plan.PlanningA good builder does not attempt to construct a home by piling one brick or stone on top of another in a vaguely vertical direction. Because words do not crumble and fall in on their users' heads, however, some writers feel no compunction about beginning their work of construction with only the vaguest notion of how the final edifice ought to look or of what will hold it up. To change the metaphor, they take a very approximate compass bearing and head off into the unknown. Sometimes they get where they want to go; sometimes they do not and end up stumbling and cursing in the wilderness, having to return to their starting point. If you are the essentially optimistic kind of person who hopes that a work will find its own direction, that it will grow organically as you write it, that what is unclear will become clear through the process of being written down, then you will probably become impatient with books or mentors that urge you to plan, plan, plan. But that is what most writers do, indeed have to do, in order to meet their schedules and to get their message across clearly.It is not, incidentally, complete folly to let a piece of writing, especially a piece of creative writing, "go its own way." A writer, for instance, will sometimes create a scene or a character that takes on a life of its own and demands more space and a fuller treatment than the writer had ever intended to give it; indeed, an incident or personage, originally intended for a minor role, can finish up by shaping the whole book or play. The story—or the writer's subconscious—takes over, and the results can be very exciting.That said, however, the "hands-off" method of writing is not a particularly efficient one, and it is likely to be downright counterproductive if you intend to put across any kind of reasoned argument. So in most circumstances you should make a plan, specifically an outline that proceeds point by point from your introduction to your conclusion. You should make the plan as detailed as you can, if possible working from paragraph to paragraph or topic sentence to topic sentence. Each point you have to make should fill roughly one paragraph, and to each point can be allocated, even at the planning stage, the evidential material that will make that point valid.If your work is clear in outline, chances are it will be clear when you write it out. An incidental benefit of working from a plan is that you are not necessarily compelled to begin at the beginning. You can select the easiest point of entry and still be confident in the knowledge that what comes before is a known and not an unknown quantity.Being Clear in the Way That You Say ItIf you wish what you say to be clear, then it must be not only clearly stated but also clearly organized. This topic will therefore be broken down into two headings, clarity of organization and clarity of expression.Clarity of OrganizationAs was said in the previous subsection, if your work is clear in outline, then it will remain so when you put it into written form. Making a plan has various practical advantages for you, as a writer, but perhaps the main purpose of a plan is to ensure that what you write is clearly and logically organized. You need to know where you are going and how you are going to get there. The reader also needs to know where he or she is going and, while perhaps not wanting to see too much of the way ahead, will usually feel more comfortable for being able to remember the route by which he or she arrived at any particular point. To keep your readers with you, you need to give them a sense that they are progressing logically, and you probably need to provide them with a few signposts, too, to reassure them that you and they are still on track.Traditional StructuresThere are various tried-and-tested structural formulas that are intended to keep writers and their readers or listeners abreast of one another. Public speakers, for instance, are frequently advised to do the following: Say what you're going to say, say it, and then say that you've said it. This is, in effect, a more down-to-earth version of the usual structure for an essay: introduction, development, and conclusion.A person who is able to write a good speech or lecture for public delivery has something to teach all writers. The members of an audience in a hall or lecture theater are not usually provided with a script. If they lose the thread, they cannot refer to the previous page or chapter, nor can they, usually, interrupt the speaker to ask for clarification. No self-respecting speaker would, in any case, wish to be either interrupted or confronted with rows of blank, uncomprehending faces. Consequently, a good speechwriter takes account of the fact that the listeners will hear the speech only once, in real time, and makes certain that they can keep up with the argument by arranging his or her argument in a simple and logical fashion and by allowing the audience to hear the vital points in the speech more than once. A writer who writes to be read rather than heard has less need of obvious repetition but still needs to show the same awareness of the needs and the possible frailties of the people whom he or she is addressing.Another type of writer for whom a clear structure is vitally important is the dramatist—and for basically the same reason: the theater audience also has to assimilate the material in real time. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a tried-and-trusted sequence of stages through which most dramatic plots proceed. Again the basic pattern of introduction, development, and conclusion is followed, but playwrights have elaborated the structure and given the various sections different names. Most plays begin with an "exposition," during which the audience is given the information it requires to understand the situation in which the characters find themselves. The art of the exposition is to reveal information that many of the characters on stage already know but the audience does not without making it appear that the characters are talking mainly for the audience's benefit and not engaging in a natural conversation. The exposition is followed by the unfolding of the main action, which generally involves embroiling the main characters in a series of conflicts or complications. The final section is known as the "denouement," a word from French that literally means "untying" or "unknotting." In the denouement, the conflicts that have hopefully kept the spectators on the edge of their seats or pleasantly amused during the bulk of the play are resolved, happily or unhappily, and the final fate of the characters is made known.As is clear from the preceding paragraphs, most written work is based on a three-part structure: a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is what most readers and listeners expect, it works, it makes for clarity, and writers should stick to the formula unless they have a good reason not to and are able to devise an alternative arrangement that is equally effective. Clarity works from the inside out: Clear thinking leads to clear expression; a clear and simple underlying structure generally helps to ensure clarity throughout the work.Ordering the Body of the WorkThe three basic parts into which a standard written work is divided are not of equal length. Beginnings and endings are generally short in comparison with the central section, in which the bulk of the material is contained and where the essential work of communication is done. It should be easy to remember that a work needs an introduction and a conclusion. It is not always easy to decide on a clear and workable principle of organization for the all-important central body of the text.The principle that you choose will depend on what you are writing. It is important that there should be a principle and, barring some overriding reason to do otherwise, that principle should be kept fairly simple.Linear OrganizationOne method of organizing material is what we might call the "linear" method. The simplest type of linear organization is chronological ordering. What was done first or happened first is described first. As events unfold in time, so you recount them. This is the obvious method of telling a story, whether a fictional piece or an account of an actual event. The reader will have no difficulty in relating to it and, indeed, is likely to expect the writer to begin at the beginning and end at the end. This expectation is so natural and so strong that many writers feel that it is boring both for them and the reader to conform to it. Instead, they start at some significant point in the story, such as the discovery of a dead body or an angry exchange between two people, and fill in the events that led up to this incident at some later point in the narrative.This latter technique is not new; it is, in fact, so ancient that there is a Latin term for it. Writers of epic poems were advised to begin in medias res (in the middle of things), because that is where Homer began the earliest great poem in Western literature, the Iliad, the story of the siege and capture of Troy. Homer did not start with the abduction of Helen of Troy and then proceed to describe how the Greek princes and heroes decided to join together to help her husband, Menelaus, win her back. Instead, his poem begins during the siege itself at a point where the greatest warrior among the Greeks, Achilles, feels so angry and insulted that he refuses to take any further part in the fighting. The relevant events from the earlier part of the story are recounted as the poem proceeds.If this technique has been in use since the very beginnings of Western literature, and is still a favorite with authors today, it must be a very effective one. Indeed it is. But it remains, essentially, a variant on chronological order. The significant event acts as a kind of introduction. The body of the work generally recounts events as they unfold from that point onward but incorporates flashbacks. So long as the writer is clear in his or her own mind about when events took place in the story as a whole and can ensure that the reader possesses the same kind of certainty, no confusion need arise.Other linear methods that deserve mention are the "journey" and the "process" in which you start at point A and eventually arrive at point D via points B and C. Each point represents a step or stage rather than individual events. You may be describing a literal journey or a literal process, not necessarily an industrial one, perhaps a legal or administrative or biological one. In that case, since both journeys and processes progress in stages, you can easily derive a plan for your written work from the material that you are writing about. But even if you are not actually describing a journey or process, it may help to imagine that you are. If you were writing an account of somebody's career, for example, it might be fruitful to think of that person's development as a "journey"—he or she reached this point and then decided to head for that objective—or as a "process"—he or she underwent this experience and as a result developed that particular skill or character trait or was enabled to grasp that opportunity—rather than as a simple sequence of events in time. In either case, you would be imparting a simple logical structure to your account that would help you to show a clear progression.Argument StructureThe purpose of a great deal of writing is to discuss a topic or to make a case for something. Here, too, a clear structure is a prerequisite for success. As a writer—in fact, as a human being—you will usually have a point of view on the subject in question. If you have no point of view—if you do not know why Hamlet delays or whether city hall should extend its recycling scheme, and do not really care—then you probably ought not to be writing on the topic in the first place. Your own input, as has been said before, is valuable for its freshness and firsthand quality, but it is also vital as an animating factor. If you are not personally engaged on any level, there will no vitality in your argument. Your point of view might simply be one of fascination or disgust at the fact that other people expend so much time and energy debating such a trivial question. That is still a point of view, and your main aim must be to convince the reader, ultimately, of the rightness of your attitude, whatever it may happen to be. Otherwise, you are like a person who takes part in a game or sport with no desire to win or do well and so derives no enjoyment from it nor provides any enjoyment for the other participants.A written argument is always and necessarily one sided insofar as there is usually only one writer and he or she has control of the game, so to speak. Nevertheless an astute writer will generally take account of the fact that an astute reader, who does not necessarily share the writer's point of view at the outset, may object to being bludgeoned into submission by a relentless presentation of only one point of view. A true argument is a form of dialogue. One participant makes a point and presents evidence to support it; the other attempts to counter the first point, again backing up the counterargument with evidence; the first participant replies with a counter to the counterargument; and so on. A clear pattern emerges from the normal conduct of an argument or debate between live participants, which the writer can use to organize his or her discussion of a topic. This entails an effort on the part of the writer to collect material representing the opposing point or points of view to his or her own and to present the opposition's view fairly. It may seem tempting to present counterarguments to your own as weak and unconvincing (they may indeed be so), but as in any contest, there is more satisfaction to be gained from beating a strong opponent by fair means than from overcoming a weak one by foul.If you cannot find material to represent the opposing side or are working on a subject where there is no such material available, then it is always open to you to use your imagination, not to conjure facts out of nothing, but to create a discussion partner who happens to hold opinions that differ radically from your own. Imagine what such a person—skeptical if you are a believer, liberal if you happen to be a conservative—would be likely to say to try to refute your arguments. Build up a case for that person to make, and, again, try not to make it one that is entirely easy for you to knock down.There are occasions when it is appropriate to present one side of the argument in its entirety, followed by the complete case for the other side, followed by your conclusion. There are no objections to this method of organization from the point of view of clarity of structure, but it perhaps works best if your own contribution is not to endorse either viewpoint wholeheartedly but to suggest a compromise between, or a synthesis of, the two opposing views in the concluding section. If you are personally involved in one side of the argument, then it is probably better to proceed point by point. This is a more dynamic approach. It brings the opposing viewpoints into more dramatic contrast and lets the reader share something of the excitement of an ongoing debate while, at the same time, enabling him or her to follow the process by which the weight of the evidence gradually but clearly begins to favor the winning side, your side.SignpostingWhatever organizational principle you adopt, it is usually wise to let the reader know what you are doing. There are more and less subtle ways of doing this, and how subtle you need to be will largely depend on what kind of piece you are writing. A novelist is not ordinarily going to write,I introduced this character in Chapter 4, and then he seemed like a pretty nice fellow. I am now going to reintroduce him and show you precisely what kind of a swine he really is. On the other hand, it would be perfectly in order for the author of a nonfiction work to write,I referred in Chapter 4 to the violent opposition of certain members of the Democratic Party to the reforms proposed by the president. I should now like to discuss in more detail the reasons for their opposition. The conventions of nonfiction writing generally allow an author to intervene and give the reader explicit guidance. The conventions of fiction generally do not. Nevertheless, if we are, say, now in chapter 7 of a novel and the character in question has not played any part in the plot since chapter 4, it may well be useful to jog the reader's memory:There was a call from James on her answering machine. Rebecca had not heard from him since the evening of Abigail's party and wondered why he should call now, but she remembered the impression she had formed of him then. He had seemed a pretty nice fellow. In fact, he had shown a good deal of interest in her, and she had thought him not unattractive. She pressed the button to play the message once again. If we want to find examples of really prominent signposting, then the best place to look is often in academic writing:This article is divided into three sections. In the first section I shall briefly recount the history of the garment-making industry in Mexico. In the second section I shall describe the effect of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on this industry. In the third section … Having dealt with the history of the Mexican apparel industry, I shall now consider the impact of NAFTA on that industry and its workers…. It may seem slightly odd that high-powered intellectuals writing principally for other high-powered intellectuals should need to spell out so distinctly what they are doing. Are memories and attention spans in academia really so short? The more likely explanation is that today's journal article was yesterday's lecture or the paper delivered to an international conference last month. Academics are used to presenting information orally to large gatherings of students or scholars. They are public speakers: They say what they are going to say, say it, then say that they have said it. As has been noted previously, people who write to be listened to need to take extra care that their audience is following the argument, hence the proliferation of explicit statements of intention and of performance.If we assume that most public speakers and academic writers occupy a position at one end of the scale of explicitness in giving guidance to the reader, and most creative writers of fiction occupy a position at the other end, then, obviously, there is a large expanse of middle ground for writers engaged in other kinds of tasks to occupy. You may not wish to dot all the i's and cross all the t's for your readers' benefit, but you ought nevertheless to provide them with a certain amount of assistance in finding their way through your text. If you are going to intervene in your own text, however, it is worth considering under what guise you ought to do so. When you step out from behind your text, so to speak, in order to give the reader directions, how should you refer to yourself and what form of words should you use?Authorial PronounsIf you are the sole author of any text, from a letter to a report or a nonfiction book of a thousand pages, the most natural way to refer to yourself is as I:I shall now endeavor to explain why I think this particular course of action would be counterproductive. If you are a coauthor of a book or article or are writing on behalf of a group of people who are assumed to speak with one voice, then the correct pronoun to use is we:Our research has produced new evidence that, we feel, casts serious doubt on the theory, and we shall now set forth our findings. People sometimes feel that it is inappropriate to use I. They perhaps feel that they may come across to the reader as pushy or self-absorbed. This, however, will be the case only if they adopt a hectoring tone and appear to be drawing excessive attention to themselves. In conversation it is perfectly legitimate to state your own point of view or describe your own experiences, and it is possible to do this without attempting to dominate the discussion. The same applies to writing. It is not a good idea to use the plural pronoun we, for instance, as a substitute for I if you are a sole author. That is an outmoded convention and is likely to cause confusion. You may nonetheless wish to use we, us, and so on, to refer to yourself and the reader, if you imagine that the two of you are engaged in a joint endeavor:Let us now consider the usual arguments against such a policy. or to refer to people in general:We are always more eager to demand our rights than to accept our responsibilities. You should always be clear in your own mind, of course, precisely to whom we refers, and if you are using we to denote an authorial team, you should be very cautious about using it in any other sense.If you really prefer to avoid using I, then the best policy is to adopt impersonal formulas:This particular course of action would be counterproductive for the following reasons: … Research has produced new evidence that casts serious doubt on the theory, as appears from the findings set forth below. The usual arguments against such a policy ought now to be considered. The only problems with this method are that it can lead occasionally to awkwardness and to an overreliance on the passive forms of verbs.Some Useful Guidance FormulasThe following are more examples of the kinds of sentences or phrases that can be used to help the reader along.Personal As I/we shall now show/demonstrate/prove … As I/we pointed out in the previous paragraph/section/chapter … I/we shall now move on to discuss … I/we shall now turn my/our attention to … I/we shall have more to say on this point in a later paragraph/ section/chapter … I/we can best illustrate this point by means of an example … I/we have shown by these examples how … Impersonal As will now be shown/demonstrated/proved … As was pointed out in the preceding paragraph/section/chapter … The next point to be discussed is … This point will be discussed further in a later paragraph/section/chapter … This point can best be illustrated by means of an example … As these examples have shown … It is ultimately your choice whether to intervene in a personal or impersonal style. It is best to maintain consistency throughout a text, however, so having made a choice, you should endeavor to stick to it.There are two final points that need to be made about signposting. The first is that it is a useful element in most texts, so you should not hesitate to use it when the occasion demands. The second is that it is not a substitute for clear organization and planning. The reader ought to be able to find his or her way through your work adequately without any guidance. Signposting should be a welcome extra, a courtesy. Clarity of structure is of the essence.Clarity of ExpressionAccording to the poet and essayist Matthew Arnold, the whole secret of style is to "have something to say and say it as clearly as you can" (cited by G. W. E. Russell in Collection and Recollections [1903]). When he made this remark, Arnold was reacting brusquely to people who asked him to teach them style and implying that there was no secret recipe for success. Style is simply clear expression.There is a good deal of truth in what Arnold said, but, to repeat a point made earlier, not everyone's thoughts and words flow clearly on all occasions. Clarity is often a quality that has to be striven for; it is not a natural result of a person's having something interesting to say. The basis of a good style is clear expression, we might say, but expressing yourself clearly is not always simple.The Bases of Clear ExpressionThe foundations of clarity of expression are correctness and simplicity. It is vital not to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of the reader's understanding of your text. Do not depart from the usual norms for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The point has been made before and will be made again: Grammar is a shared resource that is the basis of all intelligible communication; spelling and pronunciation should be viewed in the same way, as shared resources. Respect all three to ensure that you start on an equal footing with your reader and that the reader, above all, shares your understanding of what you mean to say. Consider the following example:Not much has changed here over 50 years—those who can leave, and those who cannot stay. A simple error of punctuation makes this statement unintelligible. However, insert two commas and immediately sense returns:Not much has changed here over 50 years—those who can, leave, and those who cannot, stay. Likewise, do not choose a complex word, a complicated sentence structure, or an intricate structure for your work as a whole, when a simple one will do the job equally well. Readers do not usually thank writers for making them perform mental gymnastics; they do thank writers for making reading an easy and pleasant task.Avoiding VaguenessVagueness and obscurity in expression can be avoided, in the first instance, by having something definite to say and by clear thinking. If you do not know precisely what you want to say to the reader or what kind of response you want to evoke in him or her, then you may well find yourself becoming vague and woolly, or even evasive. Assuming that you have not sat down to write purely to pass the time and to help other people pass their time, you will have a point to make. Keep reminding yourself of that fact, and keep your eye on that point. Anything that does not assist in making that point is possibly irrelevant and may need to be moved to another position in the text or removed altogether.To counteract any tendency toward vagueness and obscurity, you should also choose active words and constructions where possible. Use simple, concrete nouns and verbs to do the main work in your sentences.Avoiding AmbiguityThe fact that many words have more than one meaning has already been noted. Where a word has several meanings, there is always potential for ambiguity. In order to achieve clarity in expression, you should be aware of this potential and counteract it by ensuring that the context in which you set a word with several meanings makes it absolutely clear which meaning is intended. Consider the example that follows:Conversations with union representatives revealed changes in the nature of labor that midwives have had to deal with over the last decades. The presence of the term union representatives in this sentence suggests that labor means "work" or "working practices," but as the workers involved are midwives, labor could equally apply to childbirth. The sentence is therefore ambiguous and must be changed:Conversations with union representatives revealed that, over the last decades, midwives have had to deal with changes in the nature of their work. The comic potential in ambiguities is another consideration:Try our fantastic health program—you won't get better! But unless your primary aim is to make your readers laugh, be alert and be careful.Incorrect or sloppy grammar can also lead to ambiguity, as in the following:Introduce a friend to the club, and they can choose a free gift. They include a sports bag, a coffeemaker, and a digital alarm clock. Place the contents of the can in a saucepan. Do not allow the saucepan to boil, or it could spoil the flavor. The pronouns in the second sentence of each pair have a very loose relationship with the words in the first sentence. It is obvious enough in the first example that They in the second sentence refers to the free gift mentioned at the end of the first. But they is a plural pronoun and gift is a singular noun, and in any case the writer has already used they to refer to a friend (another usage that many people frown on). This is poor and potentially confusing writing. Think carefully, think grammatically, and change the second sentence:Introduce a friend to the club, and he or she can choose a free gift. Gifts include a sports bag, a coffeemaker, and a digital alarm clock. In the second example, meanwhile, it is unclear what it is that will spoil the flavor. Logically and grammatically it refers to the saucepan. Obviously, however, the saucepan itself will not spoil the flavor; the damage is done by allowing the contents of the can to boil. We need to make this clear and also get rid of the careless phrase boil a saucepan:Place the contents of the can in a saucepan. Do not allow the contents to boil; this could spoil the flavor. A third common cause of ambiguity is the poor organization of sentences. It is easy, when you have something fairly complex to announce or describe, to allow phrases to drift so that it becomes unclear to which other element in the sentence they are supposed to relate:A plane tree, said to be more than 200 years old, shades the road as it passes the church with wide-spreading branches. It is a rather delightful idea that an old tree should spread its branches as it passes the church, but it is not the idea that the writer intended to convey. There is a problem here with it again. It should refer to the road but can be read to refer to the tree. And the branches, of course, need to be firmly attached to the tree. That final phrase needs to be repositioned, but rearrangement can be difficult. For example,A plane tree with wide-spreading branches, said to be more than 200 years old … creates a new possibility for ambiguity (What is more than 200 years old? The tree or its branches?), so a more thorough recasting of the sentence is required:A plane tree, with wide-spreading branches and said to be more than 200 years old, shades the road where it passes the church. or, to avoid any lingering possibility of confusion with respect to it:The wide-spreading branches of a plane tree, said to be more than 200 years old, shade the road as it passes the church. ConclusionClarity is a quality that should inform the whole of your work. Think clearly, organize clearly, and express yourself clearly. Always respect the norms of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and wherever possible, keep it simple.
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