Writing style, Peter Smith

Peter Smith est professeur de Logique à Cambridge University. Il fut le directeur de la revue britannique Analysis. Il donne des conseils pour améliorer ses qualités d'écriture et d'organisation dans la rédaction d'un essai, d'une dissertation, d'un article. Le texte se trouve originellement ici.


Warning

This is just one person's view, not an Official Faculty Guide. Others will want to stress other virtues and vices in writing. Make what use of these remarks you can!



Introduction

As you may know, I used to edit one of the philosophy journals. This means that, during the average year, I read getting on for four hundred submissions to the journal -- and yes, I did read them all.

Like the other major journals, ANALYSIS can accept less than 10% of submissions. So standards are fierce. Many submissions are ruled out of court for being badly argued or for re-inventing the wheel or for being plain boring. But a fair proportion end up on the rejection pile simply because they are badly written. I saw far too much bad prose (to be sure, some of the prose that gets published is not exactly wonderful: I assure you that a lot that doesn't get published is very much worse).

Since ANALYSIS publishes relatively short articles, it attracts papers from philosophers finishing graduate school or starting out on professional careers. And bad writing is perhaps particularly common in the pieces by these younger authors, your almost-contemporaries. Now, we are not necessarily expecting you to be submitting articles for publication in the next year or two. But the faults that make for bad writing in potential articles equally make for bad writing in essays and theses. This is the time to start getting into good habits.

So the idea of these notes [written for part of a "Research Training Programme"] is that I try to impart some of what I've learnt about bad writing and the mistakes to avoid. However, it is one thing to be able to recognize bad writing when you see it; it is quite another thing to be able to say, crisply and clearly, what makes it bad. Prose can be dull, stodgy and unreadable; yet it may be very difficult to say exactly what makes it so and suggest how to improve it. And while I think I am a rather good judge of the quality of writing, I claim no special expertise at therapy for bad prose. A lot of what I'll be saying, then, will be pretty banal and obvious (with a little help from Goerge Orwell and Jonathan Bennett, I'll be making points that it doesn't need an editor's eye to spot). Still, even if you just follow the banal and obvious advice, that will be a start.


Writing and reading

It shouldn't need saying -- but I won't let that stop me saying it: you won't develop a good English prose style if you never read good English prose stylists. The great authors show just how much can be achieved in well-crafted plain prose, written without affectation or self-conscious stylishness. Choose your favourite examples. My first choice as an author for philosophers to emulate is George Orwell. Do look at some of his essays -- there are various collections. Read in particular 'Politics and the English Language', both for Orwell's reminders about how bad writing corrupts thought and for his own rules about how to improve our writing. Among more recent writers, I'd mention ...

But hold on! I'm already in danger of getting distracted. We are not here to exchange notes about favourite writers: you will have your own. Do spend some time, though, thinking (and thinking much more carefully and self-consciously than you usually do) about why your favourite stylists write well -- ask what it is about their work that makes it speak directly to you.

And now do the same for some contemporary philosophical authors as well. In different ways, Gilbert Ryle and W. V. O. Quine (for example) show how it is possible to be lucid and direct and uncluttered yet be a wonderful stylist. Frank Jackson and David Lewis are still more lucid, and (I'd say) to be emulated even more. But again, let's not pause to debate who has the best style. You will have your own favourite philosophical authors who strike you as particularly clear and direct, authors whose work makes you think "I wish I could write like that". Well, look at some of their work again, and try to work out what makes it particularly approachable and attractive.

In sum: read some of the best writers of good plain prose, philosophical and otherwise, and attend to how they achieve their effects. This must be time well spent.


Eye and ear

If I had to give just one rule to help improve your writing it would be this. Read aloud what you have written. Jonathan Bennett reports that Ryle once said to him "What doesn't read well to the ear doesn't read well to the eye". And I endorse that emphatically.

Imagine an audience, and read out your completed paragraphs (yes, aloud, and trying to put some real life into the performance). If you can't do this with conviction, you will know that something is wrong with the writing. If your tongue stumbles over laborious sentences, or if a sentence sounds ugly or flat or tedious when read out, then it needs revision. If the passage from one sentence to the next is jerky or unnatural, if a paragraph lacks shape and rhythm, then (again) revision is needed.

I can't stress enough the effectiveness of this "read aloud" test. Even better, if you can bear it, is to get someone else to read your prose aloud to you (and you are not allowed to follow on paper while you listen). If your reader finds it difficult to give shape to the sentences and to the paragraphs, if your reader stumbles when trying to your prose read aloud, then why suppose she will do any better when trying to read the same passage quietly to herself? If your writing sounds ugly or banal or repetitious or unclear when you have to listen to it (and you at least have the benefit of knowing what is supposed to be going on), then it is going to seem at least as bad to everyone else.

So Rule One: read your work aloud. Don't inflict on your supervisor or an editor anything that falls down at this hurdle.


The virtue of brevity

If you follow the "read aloud" rule, you are likely (even without thinking about it) to keep close to three of George Orwell's cardinal rules for decent prose. But let's state them explicitly all the same. Two of them are: Never use a long word where a short one will do (thus, don't write "exhibit" when you could write "show"; don't use "demonstrate" when "prove" will do as well). And Never use the passive when the active will do. So don't use

"It is claimed by Jones that realism is refuted by Putnam's argument"

when you could write

"Jones claims that Putnam's argument refutes realism"

And so on.

But Orwell's most important rule is If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out. And we can generalize this: If it is possible to rephrase a sentence to make it shorter without serious loss of content, do so. Thus, don't write the likes of

"He advanced an argument for the proposition that"

when you could write

"He argued that"

And so on. Here is an example of published prose quoted by Jonathan Bennett (in a very useful piece on 'Improving Academic Writing', Teaching Philosophy 1997):

"If what has been previously claimed (though not conclusively defended) is true-that the thesis that "ought" implies "can" is untenable even in the moral domain-then it is altogether possible that a man believe that he ought to act in such and such a way and yet, in the relevant circumstances, fail to act not merely through reasons of ignorance, inadvertance, change of heart, or the like but also (a decisive possibility) because of an incapacity to act."

Rewritten by Bennett:

"If I have been right in saying (not proving) that "ought" implies "can" is untenable even in the moral domain, then someone can fail to act as he thinks he ought because he cannot act in that way."

That's less than half the length, and is a lot clearer (exercise: do even better!).

The journal submissions I saw for ANALYSIS are, of course, authors' final drafts. The work has already been lovingly revised and polished a number of times. Yet quite often I used to ask authors to cut their work by ten or fifteen percent. And almost invariably, when I did this, authors comment (when they sent in their shortened revised version) that they thought that their paper is improved by being made leaner and fitter. If final drafts can usefully be trimmed by ten or fifteen percent, then there is likely to be a lot more redundant material in earlier drafts. Be firm: take your prose to the gym, and keep working at it until the bones and sinews show through! That's Rule Two.


Detailed rules of thumb?

If you follow those two master rules -- test your writing by reading it aloud, and keep your prose very lean and brisk -- then you'll certainly be on the right road. And if you look at (say) Fowler's Modern English Usage you'll find plenty of more detailed suggestions for cultivating good writing habits. We could spend a lot of time on such detailed suggestions: I'll mention just four (fairly arbitrarily selected).

-First, avoid repetition. That's banal. Yet over-repetition is a sin that a lot of beginning authors fall into. Clarity is not helped by saying the same thing over and over again in slightly different words. And euphony is not helped by repeatedly using the same word or phrase. (If you are writing about utilitarianism, then-to be sure-that word is perhaps going to appear often. But not every three sentences, please!).

-Second, avoid the first person pronoun. Nearly all those uses of "I think", "in my view", "it seems to me", and "in this section, I want to" can and should be axed.

-Third, avoid over-emphasis. Keep the use of italics to a minimum. Avoid over-using "very", "extremely", "really", "crucial", "obviously", "it is important to note that", and so forth.

-Fourth, favour the Anglo-Saxon -- another rule stressed by Orwell, echoed by Bennett. This makes for brevity again. Thus "hasten" is shorter than "expedite"; "secret" is shorter than "clandestine"; and so on. Again, "It is possible for us to show that " is long-winded compared with "We can show that"; "He has an obligation to show that " is long-winded compared with "He ought to show that".


Overall construction

But let's pass on from advice about how to write clear sentences and paragraphs to advice about the overall construction of your work. For is quite possible to write elegant sentences and even elegant paragraphs, and yet compose a whole which adds up to much less than the sum of its parts.

If it is difficult to discern a clear line of argument in something you have written, perhaps that's because there isn't one. The bad construction may just reflect bad philosophy. But even when there is a good line of argument in the background, you may well not be getting it across. Here are three linked suggestions about how to check that your structure is working:

First, divide your essay/chapter/paper into bite-sized chunks. Separate your piece into headed sections (and perhaps divide the sections into subsections), with no part more than about 500 words long. If you can't do this neatly and naturally, that strongly suggests that your line of argument is rambling without sufficient direction.

Second, write a brief abstract of each (sub)section. Can you give (at no more than 10% of the length) the headline news for each (sub)section? If you can't do this neatly and naturally, that again strongly suggests that your argument is not under tight control.

Third, check whether the abstracts for each (sub)section add up to a coherent overall story. When O. R. Jones and I were writing The Philosophy of Mind there was a chapter which Dr. Jones had drafted which he liked but I thought didn't work well. So I asked "How can we frame an analytical table of contents for this chapter?" -- and when we tried to compress the argument into brisk headlines and failed, we quickly agreed that something was indeed wrong. In this case, the material needed completely reordering. Likewise, if you find that the abstract for your whole piece doesn't flow well, then try reordering your material. Make imaginative use of your word-processor's cut-and-paste tools: rearranging paragraphs or sections may suddenly reveal a much better order of presentation.

I think I'd headline this advice about breaking the work into sections and writing abstracts as the basic Rule Three, to be put alongside Rule One about reading your work aloud, and Rule Two about aiming for brevity. Following Rules One and Two will help you get the micro-structure right, sentence by sentence. Following Rule Three will do a lot to get the macro-structure right.

In the hey-day of linguistic philosophy, a volume of dissenting essays was published entitled Clarity is Not Enough. And indeed it isn't enough. But complete clarity is certainly a necessary condition of any good philosophy (well, the editor of ANALYSIS would say that, wouldn't he?). Your aim, then, should always and everywhere be to write with transparent clarity. Following the suggested Rules must promote that aim.


All your own work?

Finally, let me say something about a topic that is partly a question of style, partly a question of content.

I turned down quite a few papers for ANALYSIS simply because they are 75% scene-setting. Now, a review of the current state of the debate and/or exposition of the position that you want to criticize are fine in their place. And a supervisor may very well ask you to write something more or less purely expository as an exercise to help you get clear about basics. So I'm certainly not saying "never write anything that is mainly expository". But do always ask-is this amount of scene-setting really necessary? Can't I assume that my audience (your supervisor, your examiner, the readers of the journal you are trying to write for) will already know at least that? Give your audience the benefit of the doubt and assume they are reasonably up-to-speed (a supervisor or editor will always tell you if you presuppose too much: but you are unlikely to do so).

At different stages in your writing career, different material can be taken for granted. What you are expected to spell out as an undergraduate becomes background material at M. Phil. level; and some of what you need to spell out now will in turn become background material as you march on to the frontiers. But whatever level you are working at, do try to keep the basic scene-setting appropriate to that level to no more than (say) 25% of the whole. You will want to write about the background at greater length in your own notes: but when you are writing for others, be very selective. If in doubt, prune it out.