--- name: writing-rules description: Use whenever writing or editing prose for a human reader (posts, emails, docs, essays, summaries). Short, plain, concrete sentences; no dead phrases, transitions or padding. --- # Writing rules Follow these rules when writing or editing prose. Apply them sentence by sentence. ## Sentences ### Know what each sentence says **Know what each sentence says, what it does not say, and what it implies.** Read what the words literally say, not what you meant them to say. Grammar, syntax and connotation do not care about your intentions. The reader only has the sentence. ### One thing, then stop **Let each sentence say its one thing, then end it.** A sentence that tries to carry three ideas carries none of them well. Trust the period. When a sentence is overcrowded, split it. - Bad: The town, which had lost its mill in 1998 and most of its young people soon after, voted to sell the land, a decision many regretted. - Good: The town lost its mill in 1998. Most of its young people left soon after. It voted to sell the land. Many regretted it. ### Default to short sentences **Write short sentences until you can feel the difference a long one makes.** Short sentences force clarity and leave nowhere to hide. Complex, intelligent things can be said in short sentences. Short is relative to the length you habitually write. Avoid: "lengthening a sentence to sound intelligent", "the belief that short sentences are childish". ### Long sentences, short at heart **Build a long sentence only from strong short ones, and keep it as clear as a short one.** A good long sentence is a chain of short sentences joined with care. If you cannot break it back into short sentences, it is not under control. ### Sentences stand alone **Make every sentence a complete thought that stands on its own feet.** A sentence that only makes sense by leaning on its neighbor is propping something up. Sentences can listen to each other without clinging to each other. Each should be worth reading on its own. Avoid: "sentences whose only job is to set up or wrap up another sentence". ### No sentences about sentences **Never let a sentence talk about what it is saying.** Say the thing. Commentary on your own statement is padding with a frown on it. Avoid: "It is important to note that", "It is worth noting that", "What this means is", "In other words", "It should be said that". - Bad: It is worth noting that the river flooded. - Good: The river flooded. ### Volunteer sentences **Reject the sentence that offers itself up ready-made.** The first sentence that arrives usually arrives because you have read it a thousand times. It has the rhythm and vocabulary of published prose and says nothing anyone needed you to say. Ease is not evidence of quality. Avoid: "the first phrasing that comes to mind", "sentences that sound like other sentences", "template structures". ### Compose whole sentences **Know the whole sentence before you write it down.** Typing three words and waiting for the rest locks in a shape before you have chosen one. Make the sentence in your head, try versions of it, then commit. ### What am I trying to say? **When a sentence goes wrong, ask what you are trying to say and write the answer.** The answer is usually plainer and better than the sentence it replaces. Then adjust it until you can imagine saying it out loud to someone. - Bad: The small tube of sunblock weighs little in my right hand. - Good: I'm holding a small tube of sunblock in my right hand. ### Style comes from clarity **Pursue clarity, not a style or a voice.** Style is what is left when you have said exactly what you noticed as clearly as you can. Protecting "my voice" is usually an excuse to keep bad sentences. ## Words ### Name things **Use the real name of a thing, not the category it belongs to.** Specific nouns carry pictures. Category words carry nothing. Learn the names the world already has. Avoid: "colorful flora", "an array of", "various factors", "a range of stakeholders". - Bad: A bird sat on the plant. - Good: A wren sat on the hawthorn. ### Short words **Never use a long word where a short one will do.** Long Latinate words dress up a vague claim to look precise. A short word commits you to a meaning. Avoid: "utilize (use)", "facilitate (help)", "commence (start)", "demonstrate (show)", "endeavor (try)", "phenomenon", "element", "individual (as a noun)", "objective", "categorical", "effective", "virtual", "basic", "primary", "promote", "constitute", "exhibit", "exploit", "eliminate", "liquidate", "expedite", "ameliorate". - Bad: We will utilize the tool to facilitate the commencement of the project. - Good: We will use the tool to start the project. ### Nouns that should be verbs **Turn -ion nouns and noun phrases back into verbs.** Nominalizations freeze the action into an object and leave a weak verb to push it around. Find the hidden verb and use it. Avoid: "implementation of", "utilization of", "consideration of", "the realization that", "an appreciation of", "by examination of", "make a decision", "conduct an analysis". - Bad: Consideration of the situation led to a determination to sell. - Good: We looked at the flooded cellar and decided to sell. ### Empty modifiers **Cut intensifiers and adverbs the verb already contains.** Words added for emphasis weaken the claim. If the verb is right, the adverb is redundant. If the noun is right, it needs no grand adjective. Avoid: "truly", "really", "very", "incredibly", "deeply", "vibrant", "noble", "unforgettable", "epic", "historic", "epoch-making", "veritable". - Bad: Erica wobbled uncertainly as she tried to sit down. - Good: Erica wobbled as she tried to sit down. ### Fewest words **Use the fewest words that say it, and do not make explicit what is already implied.** Every word is optional until it proves it is needed. Removing one often makes the sentence stronger. Avoid: "share in common", "are similar in that", "in much the same way as", "is in the process of", "the fact that", "in order to", "due to the fact that". - Bad: My dad and I are similar in that we both hate "stuff." - Good: My dad and I both hate "stuff." ### Look words up **Look up the words you feel sure of, not only the ones you doubt.** Meanings guessed from context drift. You are responsible for every nuance of a word you use, including its history. - Bad: Her hair, dyed black, is neatly quaffed. - Good: Her hair, dyed black, is neatly coiffed. ### "Is" is fine **Do not dodge "is" with a fancier verb that means the same thing.** Swapping "is" for "resides", "sits" or "serves as" adds pretension, not energy. Either find a real action or let "is" stand. Avoid: "resides in", "sits in (for a building)", "serves as", "stands as", "functions as". - Bad: The school resides in Little Havana. - Good: The school is in Little Havana. ### Plain English **Prefer everyday words to jargon, foreign phrases and scientific borrowings.** Jargon tells the reader you belong to a club. Plain words tell them what happened. Resist the vocabulary that comes bundled with your subject. Avoid: "status quo", "cul de sac", "deus ex machina", "mutatis mutandis", "ancien régime", "Weltanschauung", "paradigm", "synergy", "leverage (as a verb)". ### Relax stiff prose **When prose stiffens, use contractions and shorter words.** Formal is not the same as serious. If a paragraph sounds like a memo, rewrite it as a letter to a friend, then keep what survives. ### Swift, literal metaphors **Use metaphors rarely, briefly, and only when they are literally accurate.** Read every metaphor literally before keeping it. Extend none across several sentences. Never mix two images in one breath. Avoid: "extended metaphors", "mixed metaphors", "metaphor as decoration". - Bad: The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song. - Good: Pick one image you can actually see, or say it plainly. ## Verbs & syntax ### Subjects that can act **Make the subject an actor capable of doing what the verb says.** Abstract subjects doing human things make prose foggy. Put a person or a concrete thing in the subject slot and the verb wakes up. Avoid: "the data suggests", "the architecture allows", "visibility was improved", "the view offers". - Bad: Bread, rice, and bananas constituted my diet. - Good: I ate mostly bread, rice, and bananas. ### Keep the people in **Keep people in the sentence; do not let abstractions replace them.** Writing about what people do is clearer when the people are in it. - Bad: I had to travel to Spain to see smoking on widespread display. - Good: I had to go to Spain to see everyone smoking. ### Subject next to verb **Keep the subject close to its verb.** Every word between subject and verb is a word the reader holds in suspense. Move long interruptions to the front or the end, or make them their own sentence. - Bad: The report, which the committee had drafted over three months of hearings, concluded the dam was safe. - Good: After three months of hearings, the committee concluded the dam was safe. ### Active voice **Use the active voice; never use the passive to hide who acted.** The passive removes the actor. Sometimes that is the point, which is exactly why readers distrust it. Avoid: "mistakes were made", "it was decided that", "it was noticed that", "it is believed that", "he was told that". - Bad: It was decided that the program would be cut. - Good: The board cut the program. ### One verb, not a verb phrase **Use one plain verb instead of a weak verb plus a noun.** These phrases pad a sentence with extra syllables and save you the work of choosing a verb. Find the verb hiding inside. Avoid: "render inoperative (break)", "militate against", "make contact with (reach)", "be subjected to", "give rise to (cause)", "give grounds for", "have the effect of", "play a leading role in (lead)", "make itself felt", "take effect", "exhibit a tendency to (tend to)", "serve the purpose of", "prove unacceptable". - Bad: The update had the effect of rendering the system inoperative. - Good: The update broke the system. ### Plain prepositions **Replace phrase-prepositions with plain ones.** A four-word connector where one word would do is the commonest form of padding. Avoid: "with respect to (about)", "having regard to", "in view of the fact that (because)", "by dint of", "in the interests of", "on the hypothesis that (if)", "in terms of", "with regard to". - Bad: In view of the fact that it rained, we stayed in. - Good: Because it rained, we stayed in. ### Empty openings **Cut "There is" and "It is" openings and start with the real subject.** These openings postpone the subject and spend a clause saying nothing. Check how your sentences begin; habitual openers show up fast. Avoid: "There is / There are", "It is / It was", "habitual When / While / Since / Because openers". - Bad: There is an old man who lives there. - Good: An old man lives there. ### "With" and "as" as glue **Do not bolt clauses on with "with" or "as".** "With" pretends to be a conjunction and "as" forces a false simultaneity. Both let you avoid deciding how two facts relate. Make two sentences or a real conjunction. Avoid: "..., with costs falling 5%", "..., as crews scrambled", "The waves are loud as they crash". - Bad: The storm hit the coast, with thousands losing power as crews scrambled. - Good: The storm hit the coast. Thousands lost power. Crews scrambled. ### Verbs that do something **Replace inert verbs with verbs that show an action.** When most of your verbs are forms of "to be" or connective verbs like "relate", "involve" or "present", the life of the sentence has to come from somewhere else. Usually it does not. Avoid: "is a presence", "involves", "relates to", "presents", "impacts", "addresses". - Bad: The river is a presence that is felt throughout the town. - Good: The river floods the town every spring. ### Everything in its place **Put every word and phrase next to what it modifies.** An opening phrase must modify the subject that follows it. A pronoun points at the nearest noun, so check that it is the one you meant. Misplaced "only" changes the meaning. Avoid: "dangling participles", "misplaced "only"", "pronouns with two possible antecedents". - Bad: Walking to work, the rain soaked me. - Good: Walking to work, I got soaked. ### Verbs need objects **Give transitive verbs their objects.** "This enables" and "this allows" with nothing after them leave the reader to guess what was enabled. - Bad: The new tool enables faster. - Good: The new tool lets editors publish faster. ### Simple tenses **Use the simple past; do not stack pasts on pasts.** Layered tenses ("had had", "would have been") make the reader do arithmetic about time. Avoid: "had had", "had been doing", "would have been", "was to". - Bad: She had already gone when he had arrived, though he would have been there sooner. - Good: She left. He arrived an hour later. ### Not un- **Say the plain positive instead of denying a negative.** The not-un- construction looks careful and says less. Stacked negatives scramble the meaning, so count them. Avoid: "not unjustifiable", "not unlike", "not unreasonable", "not insignificant", "not without merit". - Bad: In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that the plan will work. - Good: I think the plan will work. ### Coined -ize words **Do not coin -ize, de- and -ization words to avoid a plain phrase.** Invented abstractions sound technical and hide what actually changes hands. Avoid: "operationalize", "incentivize", "productize", "deprioritize", "deregionalize", "humanization". ### "From X to Y" lists **Do not dress a list up as a range with "from ... to".** A range implies a scale between two ends. Most of these lists have no scale. Just list the things. - Bad: They used every part of the animal, from its meat to its dung and its hooves to its marrow. - Good: They used every part of the animal: meat, dung, hooves, marrow. ## Dead language ### Dying metaphors **Never use a figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.** A worn metaphor has lost its picture. Writers use it to skip inventing a phrase, and readers skip over it. Either make a fresh image you can see or say it plainly. Avoid: "toe the line", "stand shoulder to shoulder with", "play into the hands of", "no axe to grind", "fishing in troubled waters", "on the order of the day", "Achilles' heel", "swan song", "hotbed", "take up the cudgel for", "ride roughshod over", "grist to the mill", "ring the changes on", "the hammer and the anvil", "melting pot", "acid test", "leave no stone unturned", "explore every avenue", "move the needle", "at the end of the day". ### Clichés in disguise **Cut any phrase whose words cluster together on their own.** If the second half of a phrase arrives automatically, it is a cliché, even if nobody calls it one. Irony and scare quotes do not rescue it. Avoid: "plays a key role", "in today's world", "a wide range of", "more than ever", "the bottom line", "game changer", "stomping grounds". ### Prefabricated phrases **Choose words for their meaning; do not glue together ready-made strips.** Long stock phrases arrive with their own rhythm and think for you. They are easy to write and they half-conceal your meaning even from yourself. Avoid: "a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind", "a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent", "leaves much to be desired", "would serve no good purpose", "lay the foundations for", "achieve a radical transformation". ### Resounding endings **Do not prop up the end of a sentence with a grand commonplace.** A booming stock phrase at the end saves the sentence from anticlimax by adding nothing. Avoid: "greatly to be desired", "cannot be left out of account", "a development to be expected in the near future", "deserving of serious consideration", "brought to a satisfactory conclusion". ### Words that point at nothing **Do not use words the reader cannot check against anything.** Some words have no agreed definition, so writers use them to sound approving or disapproving without committing to a claim. Say what you can point to instead. Avoid: "democracy", "freedom", "justice", "realistic", "progressive", "reactionary", "equality", "romantic", "natural", "human", "values", "vitality", "living quality", "authentic", "impactful". - Bad: The outstanding feature of the work is its living quality. - Good: Name the thing in the work you can point to. ### Euphemism **Name ugly things plainly.** Euphemism lets a writer describe something terrible without calling up a picture of it. If you would not say it plainly, ask why. Avoid: "pacification", "transfer of population", "rectification of frontiers", "elimination of unreliable elements", "rightsizing", "let go", "collateral damage". - Bad: We are rightsizing the team to align with strategic priorities. - Good: We are firing forty people. ### Pretentious diction **Do not dress up a judgment in scientific or heroic vocabulary.** Grand words give an air of precision or grandeur to an ordinary or biased claim. They inflate events and hide opinions. Avoid: "epoch-making", "epic", "historic", "unforgettable", "triumphant", "age-old", "inevitable", "inexorable", "veritable", "realm", "clarion", "banner", "shield", "sword". ### Concrete melts into abstract **Keep concrete images; do not translate them into abstractions.** Abstract prose is easier to write and impossible to see. The plain version is almost always shorter. - Bad: Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity. - Good: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happen to them all. ### Logical indicators **Cut the connective words that simulate logic.** These words claim a logical relation instead of making one clear. They steer the reader and borrow the authority of an academic essay. When the sentences are clear, the connection shows itself. Avoid: "Moreover", "Furthermore", "Additionally", "Indeed", "In fact", "Thus", "Therefore", "However", "On the one hand / on the other hand", "Of course", "Whereas", "As a result (when nothing resulted)". - Bad: Moreover, the river was rising. Thus, the town flooded. - Good: The river was rising. By dawn the town was under water. ## The reader ### Trust the reader **Write for a reader who is intelligent and reads every word literally.** The reader brings everything they know about reading and about life. Write for that reader and you stop overexplaining. Write clearly and they will follow you anywhere. Avoid: "explaining common human experience", "dumbing down vocabulary by reflex". ### Write by implication **Leave room for the reader to complete the thought.** A sentence can say more than its words. Every word you cut makes room for implication. Leave some silence between sentences. ### Do not explain the detail **Show the thing, then stop; do not tell the reader what it means.** Over-narrating, over-describing and over-interpreting all say the same thing: I do not trust you to get it. - Bad: Her hands shook as she signed, which showed how nervous and afraid she really was. - Good: Her hands shook as she signed. ### Transitional sentences **Never write a sentence whose only job is to connect two others.** Bridge sentences, previews and recaps exist because you fear the reader will get lost. Start the next paragraph with its first real sentence. Use transitions only for real turns. Avoid: "Having looked at X, we can now turn to Y", "as mentioned above", "as we will see", "This section will discuss", "Now let us consider". - Bad: Having looked at the costs, we can now turn to the benefits. - Good: Delete it. Start the next paragraph with the first benefit. ### Creeping sentences **Do not restate the previous sentence before adding to it.** Sentences that step on each other's heels make the reader walk the same ground twice. ### Self-disparagement **State what you see; cut the hedges and apologies.** Authority comes from clear sentences, not credentials. Hedging every claim or belittling your own view asks the reader to discount you. Avoid: "I might be wrong, but", "It doesn't matter what I think", "My problem is", "It could be argued that", "in some ways", "arguably". - Bad: I might be wrong, and it probably doesn't matter what I think, but the plan seems flawed. - Good: The plan has a flaw. ### Borrowed authority **Do not imitate the voice of professors, journalists or experts.** Stiff, credential-signaling prose tries to overawe the reader. It reads as a costume. Hiding behind quoted sources works the same way. Avoid: "academic register for its own sake", "As X famously said", "experts agree", "studies show (unnamed)". ### Do not perform **Do not wink at the reader or write for applause.** Cleverness for its own sake, hyperbole and mock formality pull attention from the subject to the writer. Avoid: "utmost horror", "jokey hyperbole", "self-aware asides". ### State the obvious **Say the obvious thing plainly; it may be news to the reader.** Straining to be original produces clever sentences that are not quite true. Accurate and clear beats clever. ### Keep the promise **Make every sentence deliver what its opening promises.** The start of a sentence sets an expectation about where it is going. Ambiguity breaks that promise, and readers always take the wrong reading. ### Use "I" plainly **Use "I" when it belongs; do not contort sentences to avoid it.** Dodging the first person creates passives and abstractions. Being coy with it is no better. ## Openings, order, endings ### Begin, do not introduce **Start the piece with its first real sentence; skip the throat-clearing.** Generalizing openers delay the piece and sound like every other piece. The first sentence only has to make the reader want the second. Avoid: "Throughout history,", "In today's fast-paced world,", "Since the dawn of time,", "We all know that", "Have you ever wondered". - Bad: Throughout history, people have always wondered about the sea. - Good: The tide went out at four, and the harbor smelled of iron. ### No hooks **Do not write a hook; the reader does not need grabbing.** Clever, teasing openers advertise the piece instead of beginning it. Presence holds a reader longer than a trick does. Avoid: "teaser openings", "rhetorical-question openers", "shock statistics as a first line", "coy foreshadowing". ### Light first sentence **Do not make the first sentence summarize or frame the whole piece.** Audition many first sentences and pick the one that opens possibilities, not the one that feels safe. ### Find the path in sentences **Find the structure sentence by sentence instead of filling in an outline.** An outline assumes you know what you think before you have written it. Clarify the sentences first and the structure reveals itself. Genre templates are outlines by another name. ### Spend your material **Do not save the best point for the end.** Withholding the strongest material for a big finish leaves the middle thin. Use it where it belongs. You will think of more. Avoid: "the climactic reveal", "a conclusion that restates the point". ### No previews **Cut topic sentences and paragraphs that announce what is coming.** Previewing content is a promise to say it later. Say it now. Avoid: "In this essay I will", "This section covers", "Here's what you need to know", "Let's dive in". ### No forced ending **Stop when you are done; do not add a summarizing finale.** The ending you want is probably already written a few sentences back. Avoid: "In conclusion,", "In the end,", "Ultimately,", "At the end of the day,", "a final restatement of the thesis". ### Resist chronology **Do not default to telling things in the order they happened.** Chronology is a choice, usually a dull one. Order the piece by what matters, and break the flow of time once it starts to take over. Avoid: "When I arrived... then I saw... then I noticed", "first, then, next, finally". ### Atomize your evidence **Use the one detail or quote you need, where you need it.** Do not present material in the clumps you gathered it in. Break notes, interviews and sources apart and give each fact a new neighborhood. Quote only the part that matters. Avoid: "block quotes", "summarizing sources one after another", "a full scene to make one point". ### Clarity, not argument **Persuade with clear sentences, not with the scaffolding of an argument.** Most prose "logic" is just proximity. A fragile house of premises and connectives collapses when one card slips. Write so clearly that the point looks self-evident. ### Why am I telling you this? **Know why you are telling the reader this before you write it.** If you cannot answer, the reader will not be able to either. ## Rhythm ### Vary the shape **Hunt for sameness in sentence length and structure, and break it.** Runs of same-shaped sentences put the reader to sleep. Choppiness is cured by variation, not by making sentences longer. When you repeat a shape, have a reason the reader can feel. Avoid: "five sentences in a row that open with the subject", "every sentence the same length". ### Forced parallelism **Do not let a pattern dictate the next sentence.** Parallel structures and contrasts are powerful once. As a habit they force weak words into slots and make prose sound like a speech. Avoid: "It's not X. It's Y.", "tricolons by reflex", "While X, Y", "repeated sentence openings for effect". - Bad: It's not about speed. It's about trust. It's not about tools. It's about people. - Good: Teams that trust each other ship faster than teams with better tools. ### Contrastive openings **Do not steer the reader with a contrast word at the start of a sentence.** Two plain sentences side by side make the contrast without announcing it. - Bad: While hospitals charge thousands for a prosthetic leg, the clinic charges forty dollars. - Good: Hospitals charge thousands for a prosthetic leg. The clinic charges forty dollars. ### Drop the "but" **Remove "but" and "however" when the reversal survives without them.** It usually does. When you need one, prefer "but" to "however". - Bad: The house was old, but it was sturdy. - Good: The house was old. It was sturdy. ### First and last positions **Put the words that matter at the start or the end of the sentence.** The beginning and end of a sentence are its stressed positions. The middle is where words go to hide. ### The short sentence **Use a short sentence as a harbinger, a reprise or a coda.** Next to longer sentences, a short one lands hard. Adjacent short sentences create friction. ### Sing-song endings **Keep the last sentence from settling into a steady, predictable beat.** A crescendo the reader can hear coming sounds like a closing line from a speech. ### Sound spoken, not colloquial **Adjust each sentence until you can imagine saying it.** Spoken prose uses short, simple words, few clauses and a clear rhythm. It is not slang. If you would never say it to a person, rewrite it. ## Revision ### Revise by deletion **Revise toward brevity: remove words instead of adding them.** Treat every word as optional until it proves itself. Remove one, read the sentence again, and put it back only if the sentence stumbles. Try it even on "the". ### The sentence inside **Look for the better sentence hiding inside a bad one.** Often it is already there, under the padding. Delete first, then look. ### Reimagine, do not shuffle **Fix a broken sentence by rethinking it, not by rearranging its words.** Moving the same words around like a Rubik's Cube rarely fixes them. Ask what you are trying to say and start over. ### Read it aloud **Read your draft aloud and stop wherever your ear senses trouble.** The faint feeling that something is off is the best evidence you will get. Find its cause before moving on. Read plainly, without performing. ### One sentence per line **Put each sentence on its own line to see it.** Broken out, you see lengths, openings, repeated shapes and repeated words that a paragraph hides. Count the forms of "to be" and the -ion nouns. ### No provisional sentences **Revise at the point of composition; do not leave placeholders to fix later.** A rough draft full of sentences you mean to fix becomes the structure you are stuck with. ### Read as a stranger **Read your work as a reader would, not as its writer.** You know what you meant. The reader only has what you wrote. Read for the words, not through them. ### Repeated words **Hunt down words you repeated by accident.** Deliberate repetition has a job. Accidental repetition is noise, and a shrinking vocabulary is a sign you are bored. ### Fix sentences, not chunks **Do not judge whole sections; fix one sentence at a time.** "This is terrible" and "this is great" are both ways to stop looking. When stuck, fix the next sentence. ### Revise toward **Revise toward brevity, directness, simplicity, clarity, rhythm, literalness, implication, variation and silence.** Remove words instead of adding them. Cut evasive phrasing. Watch for ambiguity. Leave some silence. ## Noticing & thinking ### Writing is thinking **Use the sentences to find out what you think.** Making sentences and thinking are the same act. Let what you discover while writing change what you meant to write. ### Notice what you notice **Write down what you actually noticed, not what you are supposed to notice.** If you noticed it, it matters. Nobody will authorize you to find it important; you have to do that yourself. ### Testimony, not proof **Attest to what you saw instead of trying to prove a case.** Writing witnesses. Say how things are as accurately as you can, and dare to say what is true. ### Say what you believe **Write only what you actually think, not what the audience expects.** Reciting a party line in its stock phrases turns the writer into a ventriloquist's dummy. Insincerity produces foggy prose. ### The shape of your ignorance **Acknowledge what you do not know instead of hiding it.** Knowing the edge of your knowledge keeps the writing honest and the claims the right size. ### Forget flow **Distrust sentences that came easily; flow is something the reader feels, not the writer.** Ease is not evidence of quality. Writing is hard, and the difficulty means you are paying attention. The reader will never know how hard the sentence was to make. Avoid: "inspiration", "flow", "natural", "genius", "writer's block (name the real cause)". ### Read as a writer **Read for how sentences are made, not only for what they mean.** Every sentence in good prose is the residue of decisions. Ask why this word, this shape, this rhythm. Never stop reading. ## Sentence audit Ask these of every sentence before you call a draft done. - What is the ordinary way to say this? Measure the sentence against it. - What does the sentence literally say, as opposed to what I meant? - Does the sentence keep the promise its opening makes? - Is the subject capable of the action of the verb? Is anyone in the sentence at all? - How far is the subject from its verb? - How many verbs are forms of "to be"? Is a noun phrase doing a verb's work? - How many sentences begin with the subject? With "There", "It", "When", "While", "Because"? - Are any two sentences the same shape? If so, can you feel the reason? - What is "as" doing here? What is "with" doing here? - Does the opening phrase modify the subject of the sentence? - What is the nearest noun to this pronoun? Is that the one I meant? - Does each metaphor work literally, all the way to the end of the sentence? - Is anything made explicit that was already implied? - Are there sentences that only explain or connect the sentence before them? - Remove one word and read it aloud. Does the sentence stumble? If not, leave it out. - Break a long sentence into its separate assertions. Which ones survive? - Can I visualize the physical action described? - Does the last sentence settle into a familiar, steady beat? - Does anything make my ear stop when I read it aloud? - What am I trying to say?