What writers and others say
“It is too simple to say (Churchill’s) leadership lay in his oratory. President Warren Harding was an orator, but his bloviations were an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea.
“Churchill’s speeches were packed with meat; flunking Latin at school, he got into his bones the essential structure of the ordinary English sentence. He knew people would not march behind a subordinate clause.”
— Harold Evans reviewing His Finest Hour for The New York Times Book Review
“Language is more like mathematics than magic. It is a program code, for the computer called the mind, and its sequencing is not arbitrary at all. The choice and flow of words is guided by a complex, interlocking system of straightforward principles. While experts may snarl at one another over fine points, most of composition is ruled by the iron hand of grammar, usage, fine-scale structure, rhythm and the other laws of polish.”
— Jon Franklin, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and creative nonfiction guru
“Writing simply means no dependence clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words as we can get away with.”
— Theodore Giesel, aka Dr. Seuss
“If we journalists are poets at heart (just ask any of us), why can’t we hear the non-poetry of a 19-word dependent clause.”
— Bob Levey, “hometown columnist” for the Washington Post
“Remember, English is a left-leaning language.”
— Joe Marren, journalism professor at Buffalo State College
“A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.”
— Henry David Thoreau, American author
“Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’”
— Kurt Vonnegut, American novelist
“I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.”
— H.G. Wells, English author
“The longer and more complex a sentence, the harder it is for readers to understand any single portion of it.”
— authors of A Plain English Handbook
Reach more readers with tight writing
Would your piece be twice as good if it were half as long? Yes, say readability experts.
So how long should your message be? Your paragraphs? Your sentences? Your words? What reading ease level should you hit?
Learn how to write clearer, more concise messages at our clear-writing course.
