Introduction.
I learned something unexpected about writing while reading a biography of John Adams.1 His wife, Abigail, was a terrific writer whose words still constitute a national treasure of wit and wisdom. Some examples follow:
“If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.”
“We have too many high-sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.”
“Great necessities call out great virtues.”
“I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, ‘Give, give.’”
“I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.”2
I learned this from the biography: Abigail Adams completed a first-grade education, and I could see that she wrote better than most of the students at the university where I teach. Students entering college claim 12 times the formal education that Abigail Adams attained.3 This difference strikes me as tragic and strange.
When I mention this irony to my students, we wonder together, shouldn’t 12 years of schooling bring my students to a solid level of writing if Abigail Adams could succeed with one year of formal schooling?
Experts suggest the United States faces a writing crisis, and I agree. Steve Graham, an education professor, said in The Huffington Post:
We risk a generation of Americans ill prepared for work and society.
In 2012, high school graduates attained an average score of 488 on the writing portion of the SAT. This is the lowest average score since the test was introduced in 2006, and it is well below the level of proficiency required for success in today’s knowledge-based economy. According to College Board, the test sponsor, 43 percent of the students who participated were poorly prepared for course work at the college level. Moreover, only 40 percent of students took the test in 2012. Students performed just as poorly on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, with a mere 27 percent of 8th- and 12th-graders scoring at or above grade level on the written portion of the 2011 assessment.
These test scores are especially alarming in light of identifiable shifts in the American workplace. We have transitioned to a knowledge-based economy in which communication skills are more important than ever. It’s how we inform, explain, argue, persuade, and convey actionable information to others. We interact through tweets, blogs, emails, presentations, and other types of formal and informal writing. Effective communication through these media outlets has become crucial to full participation in economic and social life. Therefore, the alarming decline in writing proficiency constitutes a true crisis.4
Author and education expert Peg Tyre, in an influential article in The Atlantic, wrote something similar,
According to the Nation’s Report Card, in 2007, the latest year for which this data is available, only 1 percent of all 12th-graders nationwide could write a sophisticated, well-organized essay. Other research has shown that 70 to 75 percent of students in grades four through 12 write poorly. Over the past 30 years, as knowledge-based work has come to dominate the economy, American high schools have raised achievement rates in mathematics by providing more?-extensive and higher-level instruction. But high schools are still graduating large numbers of students whose writing skills better equip them to work on farms or in factories than in offices; for decades, achievement rates in writing have remained low.5
Furthermore, the website bestcollegesonline.com listed 12 reasons why America is in a writing crisis. The site estimates direct costs of this deficiency to businesses at $3.1 billion a year, and that’s just on remedial training.6
Why is it that students struggle at writing when Abigail Adams could succeed with far less education? I place the blame not on allegedly lazy, hurried students who have too much access to technology or texting. I place it — mostly — on an education system that failed to teach them. Others share my opinion. Tyre wrote:
“Many elementary and middle school teachers labor under the delusion that, as one debate participant suggested, ‘all children can write, if we let them.’ The assumption, it seems, is that coherent sentences spill from children as easily as tears or laughter, as long as teachers are nurturing and provide a safe space. In keeping with that romantic notion, the skills that form the foundation of good writing — handwriting, spelling, word study, sentence construction, and writing a coherent paragraph — may be taught haphazardly or not at all.”7
Tyre points to the No Child Left Behind Act, which focuses more on reading and math than writing, as another key culprit.8
Other problems in traditional education contribute to this problem:
- When students write papers for school, those papers often drift over subjects about which students care little. These papers rely on long beginnings as students add dry, meandering words to meet an artificial word-count.
- When students assume, rightly, that teachers will read an entire paper during evaluation, those students may come to assume all future readers will read articles or memos as carefully as they sense their teachers do, so students focus on expressing themselves with flowery prose rather than on meeting the needs of an audience. The writing lengthens because students fail to see how little time their audiences actually possess to dedicate to the words of writers.
- When hard-working teachers blast through long, complex lists of grammatical definitions in a hot classroom, students lose confidence as they struggle to tell the difference between an infinitive and an appositive or between a predicate nominative and a gerund. These students may begin to assume that good writing comprises learning terms, which they struggle to remember.
- When teachers evaluate homework not for written competency but for sufficient attention to course material and readings, students receive little useful analysis of writing.
These habits contribute to a system that fails to teach students correct principles.
Above all these, however, I find two missing or misunderstood ideas that shape the growth of this writing problem.
First, too few people understand that writing is an act of service.
Too many people learn somehow from school that writing is about creativity and self-expression. Tyre made this point clear:
“What is happening in many elementary and middle schools is that creative writing is writing instruction — and here, I believe, our schools are going badly wrong.”9
Why is writing an act of service not an act of identity?
Powerful writers understand writing effects change in readers and audiences. Those who write well take readers to faraway lands with stories of conflict and redemption. Those who write well present new ideas in bright context. Those who write well explain, providing new ways to achieve and to grow. Those who write well move, connect, teach and persuade. Their writing makes a difference and helps readers learn and feel. Good writing accomplishes these goals, which together comprise service.
Service takes discipline and care, but when writers focus on neurotic or personal needs to express themselves rather than on their readers’ needs to learn something, writing meanders and drifts toward gray. When effective writers think first of an audience, clarity and style become paramount, on the other hand. They begin to serve.
Second, too few people understand that writing is about attaining clarity and style.
Too many people think the essence of effective writing comes with commas in the correct place or with words spelled in the right way. Effective writing requires precise grammar and spelling, of course. Much as a speaker loses credibility when poorly dressed, a writer frustrates an audience when grammar and punctuation fail. However, just as dressing well for a speech is not enough to carry the day, grammar and syntax alone aren’t effective writing. The quest of writing should focus on clarity and powerful style. Writing should make a point worth making, and making a point requires more than good grammar.
In short, when writing fails, service fails. That failure leads to difficult consequences in employment.
The official website of the GMAT exam said,
“In the words of one U.S. high-tech recruiter, “Communication is KEY. You can have all the financial tools, but if you can’t communicate your point clearly, none of it will matter. Our 2014 survey of nearly 600 employers revealed what they want most from new graduate business hires—they want people who can speak well, write well, listen to others, present well, sell ideas to others, and negotiate with others in the course of running a business—in other words, they want communicators, with a capital C.”10
The business website CNBC wrote, “In survey after survey, employers are complaining about job candidates’ inability to speak and write clearly.”11
Simply put, writing matters and writing serves, and too few demonstrate they know how to serve because an education system somehow let students fail. I feel this failure because my students’ failures represent my failures.
And so, I have reflected on this growing problem for many years. As I studied the art of writing for decades, as I evaluated thousands of papers, and as I wrote hundreds of newspaper articles, I focused on one goal: What concrete advice would make the most difference? What simple, actionable concepts might produce the biggest results? In the language of the Book of Mormon, what small and simple things might bring to pass great change in helping students serve with writing and in helping them become clear and powerful?12
This handbook sets out to meet that goal. I pose three simple principles that, if followed, will change improve clarity and style. These principles are using verbs, using specifics and using parallelism. I mean to provide a simple, clear handbook that will bring meaningful change and understanding.
I will show how to apply these three principles. A writer should be able to look at a draft piece of writing and glance for terms, words or concepts that indicate a need to change. I call these words “yellow-flag” words, words that represent caution in writing. None should be fully eliminated, but each represents dull, tepid prose and so might be changed. This book describes those words.
To be the kind of writer you wish will require more than just a quick reading of this handbook. Thought, reading, and practice will help. My effort intends to provide something actionable and concrete. These principles work. I ask for trust that says these three principles will help you succeed. What I teach here represents decades of experience and thought.
These three principles will help you serve with power and clarity.
Let’s begin.