How to write with a generous spirit

Some very smart people write very poorly.  Sometimes the problem involves not having learned the mechanics of good writing. Sometimes the problem is "overwriting," a style that is too complex and that calls attention to itself rather than what is being written about. I am writing this essay so that I have something to hand students who need a bit of coaching on this subject.  I'm posting it online because I think it might be useful to others as well.

An author is like a host.  Consider what being a good host requires.  You must be gracious and welcoming.  If the guests show up in jeans when you had planned black tie, you must still be gracious and welcoming -- and perhaps take off your coat and tie to make your guest feel like they fit in better.  You don't make your guests do a lot of work, but if there is something the guests can do that will be engaging, you give a task or two, and perhaps you increase the level of effort required by your guests as the evening progresses (first they pass a tray of hors d'oeuvres, later they might like serving the cake), but you never get to the point of making it unpleasant for them.  And the food: A gracious host is careful to season it moderately, not to the point at which the spices are overpowering.

Picture of the most gracious hostess I ever knew.

What does gracious and welcoming writing look like?  While it might be tempting to exclaim, “Complex ideas require complex forms of expression!” we know that is not true.  Some of the most eloquent, complex ideas have been expressed in clear prose.  Yes, the work of some writers (Levinas comes to my mind) are notable for being difficult to read, a PhD student is not yet famous enough for people to read his or her work despite the obtuseness of the prose.  Furthermore, even if (when) the student does become a famous scholar, a crowning achievement is to be known for the grace and clarity of one’s prose.  I, for one, would be much happier to be compared to Dewey than to Peirce.

The author should be working harder than the reader.  Here I am assuming that your reader has an appropriate level of background knowledge and a willingness to pay an appropriate amount of attention to the author’s words.  That’s it.  I’m not saying that the author must write down to the reader.  Rather, I suggest that complex, obtuse prose is that way either because the author has not yet figured out the problem clearly enough to explain it well, or because the author thinks (perhaps subconsciously) that complex sentences and big words make him or her seem smart – or smarter -- or both. 

Sentences that have lots of subordinate phrases and clauses and are full of infrequently used, multisyllabic words require the reader to read and reread, to parse carefully, to figure out what that “not” is negating, and so forth.  Authors should vary sentence length to increase the liveliness of the prose, but break up all sentences that are too long and have too many phrases and clauses.  Before dumping the author’s extended vocabulary into the text, the author consider which words are actually needed.  (Here the analogy to seasoning moderately and not overwhelming what ought to be the main flavors of the dish is particularly apt.)

As for the complexity of the concepts, my view is that it is best to start by working through the less complex and work up to the more complex.  Just like the host first invites the guest to pass the hors d'oeuvres and then may later provide a slightly more challenging task, the author should offer the reader simple ideas before moving to more difficult, more nuanced ones.  The author is, to use yet another analogy, teaching, and a good teacher asks the student to start by learning to do the easier or more basic things and then more to progressively more difficult ones.  An author should work the same way.   

This is not about dumbing down the research or writing simplistically.  This is about, first of all, clarifying your concepts and explaining them well and, secondly, about respecting your reader who, frankly, has better things to do than read self-indulgent, overly complicated prose.

The degree of prior knowledge a written work will require of the reader will, of course, depend on the intended audience and purpose of the work.  The reader of a scholarly journal article will be expected to have more prior knowledge; to be more willing to accept the specificity of a sophisticated, technical vocabulary; and to comprehend more complex sentence structure than a freshman reading an introductory textbook.  Nevertheless, it is the author's job to match the difficulty of the prose to the intended reader and to avoid making the writing any harder to read than absolutely necessary.  In short, a good author writes with a generous spirit, welcoming the reader to think about the author's thoughts, inviting the reader to join the author on an intellectual journey.