The Art of Writing

Most writing is a private activity but a public service. You may dash off a protest letter in solitude of your study, or compile a report in the office after everyone has gone home for the night, or scribble a few secret paragraphs of your romantic novel at the kitchen table while the baby is sleeping but in each case intention is the same that eventually your writing may become the reading matter of someone else, that your private words will 'go public'.

Writing in other words, is above all for communication – for conveying ideas and feelings from one mind to another mind. Apart from the few oddities – filling out a crossword puzzle, or writing 'X loves Y' in the sand at low tide – this is true of all writing tasks. Even with such activities such as taking lecture notes, or recording a funny incident in your secret diary, you are still writing to communicate with your future self.

The hallmarks of good writing, then, are the hallmarks of good communication. The ABC's of both are these

accuracy, appropriateness, attentiveness to your audience, avoidance of ambiguity

brevity or conciseness, brightness or buoyancy

correctness (of usage and grammar), clarity, consistency, correctness

Since writing is primarily for communication, you have to keep your reader constantly in mind as you write. This is not always easy to do. Faced with an intense or convoluted writing task, you many often become very inward looking, struggling to put your thoughts into words and get the words down on paper. You will then need to force yourself continually to emerge from this self-absorption.

You must continually keep your eyes forever on your Reader. That alone constitutes Technique.- Fort Maddox Ford, The English Novel

That means more than typing neatly, or avoiding a personal shorthand which only you can follow. It means taking trouble – ordering your thoughts in the most methodological and logical sequence, and wording them in the most lucid language. If you fail to take that trouble in clarifying your ideas, you will put the reader to a great deal of trouble in deciphering them.

You write with ease to show your breeding, But easy writing's curst hard reading. - Richard Brinsley Sheridian, Clio's Protest

As it happens, it is not so difficult to think yourself into the mind of another person: you probably do it everyday, whenever you speak to anyone.

Think how carefully you pitch the level of your voice and speech according to circumstances. If you are speaking to someone hard of hearing, you tend to speak louder than usual. If you are speaking to a child or foreigner, you tend to use simpler words and shorter sentences than usual, and talk at a slower pace. If you are speaking to the bishop, you probably adopt a more formal and respectful tone than you use with your workmates.

With writing, things are not so easy: you get less guidance from your 'audience' and they get even less from you. Listeners derive information not just from the speakers words but also from the tone of his voice, his pauses, his facial expression, his gestures, his 'body language', and so on. Readers by contrast have only words to guide them ( together with a few typographical aids such as italics and exclamation marks). Similarly most speakers with an live audience enjoy immediate 'feedback' and can modulate their level instantly to ensure that the message is getting across. Writers, by contrast, get their readers feedback only after their act of writing is finished.


When writing a letter or report keep, thinking about the readers response to the contents, the style and tone


As for style the constant watchword is: appropriateness.  Write simply bearing in mind that simple writing varies according to readers level of sophistication.
As for tone: pitching it correctly is rather dressing correctly. Don't confuse formal with stiff. A formal tone still attracts and involves the reader; a stiff tone distances and alienates the reader.


Above all, remember someone has to do the work if communication is to take place successfully. An inverse proportion operates: the more work you as a writer do to get it right, the less work the reader has to do. And vice versa. If you slack, it will be the reader who does the bulk of the work - or perhaps not: he may simply view the whole thing as a discourtesy, and give it up as a bad job.

Excerpts from the book Above