Summary

The article distills key writing insights from various books, emphasizing the importance of writing for the audience's understanding, avoiding certain words, and using the passive voice judiciously.

Abstract

The author of the article has extensively read and synthesized advice from numerous books on writing to provide readers with three valuable tips. Firstly, it is crucial to write in a way that conveys expertise without overwhelming non-expert readers, which can be achieved by simplifying complex concepts, providing sources, and getting feedback from laypeople. Secondly, the article advises against the overuse of adverbs and parasitic prepositions, advocating for more dynamic and varied sentence structures. Lastly, it challenges the common aversion to the passive voice, demonstrating its effectiveness in certain contexts for clarity and emphasis.

Opinions

The author believes that writing advice often lacks depth, necessitating a deeper dive into expert literature.
Expert writers should tailor their content to the knowledge level of their audience, avoiding jargon and unexplained references.
Adverbs and parasitic prepositions are deemed unnecessary and monotonous, detracting from the quality of writing.
Nominalized verbs are seen as less engaging than their active counterparts, disrupting the flow of reading.
The passive voice, while commonly discouraged, is defended as a useful tool for restructuring sentences to enhance clarity and focus on the subject.
The article suggests that writing tools criticizing the passive voice may oversimplify the craft of writing, overlooking the nuanced contexts where passive constructions are beneficial.

Writing

I Have Read a Ton of Books on Writing, so You Don’t Have To

3 helpful tips for better writing I found

Writing shorter sentences is boring advice.

You’ve probably heard it 100 times. The internet is full of the same old tips.

That’s why I started reading a lot of popular books on writing.

Here are the most helpful tips I learned from the best authors.

1. Why and how to hide your expertise

You write about things that you know about. The target group on the other side is interested in the topic, but not yet an expert. It’s difficult to write appropriately in this situation.

Something has to be explained to non-experts who have no prior knowledge. The problem is that we often write for ourselves, not for others. The written text then presupposes knowledge that the reader does not have.

This knowledge may be technical words, conclusions, or references that the reader cannot comprehend. Fortunately, as writers, we can find and fix all three before we publish.

I keep catching myself writing “you can guess,” “it’s obvious,” “it’s logical.” When proofreading, I pay special attention to such sentences and their context. Is it really clear to the reader what is clear to me?

References are also easy to find — it can already be sentences like “everyone knows,” “it is well known.” But you have to be careful. If the reader can no longer follow the text, he will get frustrated and stop reading — he might think that he cannot understand.

Ok, so we can fix the problem — but how can we prevent it from the beginning?

We need to write as an expert in a way that non-experts can understand. Here are three ways to practice doing just that.

Write a text on a topic on which you are not an expert. Yes, it’s hard work, but worth it. You will get a good feeling for the information density and length of an educational but simple text.
Back up all the knowledge in the text with sources. This way, the reader can look it up. By finding sources, you can also put the knowledge in the proper context. From “it is clear” to “an investigation shows.”
Have an uninformed person read your text. If she understands it, other non-experts should have no problem with the text.

2. Some types of words do your text no good

Adverbs are at least as unpopular among writers as the passive voice. We will come to the latter in a moment. There are two problems with adverbs.

First, they are often unnecessary. If I say “the price is 5 dollars”, no one asks if it is exactly 5 dollars. Yet many writers write this way. Instead of keeping it simple, they add unnecessary ballast and write, “the price is exactly 5 dollars”.

Second, almost all adverbs have the same ending. In a good text, however, it is essential to avoid monotony. Constantly using words that end with “ly” is boring to read.

Another group of words you should avoid are parasitic prepositions. Prepositions have their justification. However, because of everyday language, they have crept into many sentences in which they are unnecessary.

“Let’s meet up at the restaurant,” “We will miss out on the show.” If you leave out the prepositions in both sentences, you have lost nothing.

Verbs sound more powerful and stimulate the imagination. But where can we use them more? By avoiding nominalized verbs.

“The company reached an agreement to expand.” is grammatically correct but sounds better like this:

“The company agreed to expand.”

The content of the sentence is the same. Nominalized verbs often slow down the flow of reading. Try to use as many verbs as possible.

3. The passive voice isn’t that bad

The passive voice is unpopular among writers. No wonder — writing tools like Grammarly or Hemingway criticize sentences written in the passive voice.

I always tried to avoid this form. Until now, because the form has its justification.

Passive voice is used when the subject of the sentence is being acted upon. This can have advantages — here are two examples.

“Another man, he says, whom someone had told to get rid of the puppy, gave the dog to him.” ¹. It sounds pretty complicated, doesn’t it? Here is the same sentence in the passive voice:

“The puppy, he says, was given to him by another man who had been told to get rid of the dog.” ¹ — much easier. The subject, the puppy, is now at the beginning, which makes the sentence more clear. Here is another example.

Imagine you are writing a text about hawks. To emphasize the topic, it makes sense to have it right at the beginning.

“The visitors observed the hawk flying,” sounds nice, but rewriting makes it even better: “The hawk was observed flying by the visitors.”

So passive voice is not a mortal sin. On the contrary — it has its justification. Change a sentence to passive voice; maybe you can plan something better that way.

Sources

[1]: The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker (2014)