Writing with Clarity

It would be the unusu­al writer who has not, at some time in their career, read, or turned to a style man­u­al, or for that mat­ter a guide to the Eng­lish lan­guage. Strunk and White’s The Ele­ment of Style is one such clas­sic. The Chica­go Man­u­al of Style, now in its 17th edi­tion, is anoth­er go-to guide. My atten­tion was recent­ly caught by Dreyer’s Eng­lish: An Utter­ly Cor­rect Guide to Clar­i­ty and Style. By Ben­jamin Drey­er. He is the copy chief of Ran­dom House.

For those not entire­ly famil­iar with the pub­lish­ing process, a copy edi­tor is the per­son who, “after a piece of writ­ing has been … through numer­ous drafts, devel­oped and revised by the writer and by … the edi­tor … [goes over the work] and makes it bet­ter. Clean­er. Clear­er. More efficient.”

Such a per­son is not gen­er­al­ly known by read­ers, although such peo­ple are vital to book making.

It is a myth that writ­ers work alone. Many peo­ple, from my wife, to friends, edi­tors, copy edi­tors, have had use­ful things to say about what I write dur­ing the long jour­ney to pub­li­ca­tion. Always. The point is, every book I have writ­ten (and it’s true for most pub­lished books) has under­gone scruti­ny and improve­ment by a copy edi­tor. My expe­ri­ence is that these peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly very smart, and their con­scious knowl­edge of the lan­guage far exceeds my own. Over the years I’ve got­ten to know some of them, become friends, col­lab­o­ra­tors, so that at cer­tain pub­lish­ers I request that they copy edit my books. Their cor­rec­tions and sug­ges­tions always make my books better.

Which is why Dreyer’s Eng­lish is so inter­est­ing and valu­able. He is not set­ting down rules so much as he is show­ing how to bring (as per his sub­ti­tle) clar­i­ty to one’s work. Instance: In one of his ear­li­er chap­ters he points out a num­ber of words which are redun­dant, unnec­es­sary, that clog up sen­tences. In one sense they are clichés. Or writ­ing tics. Every writer has them.

In bed last night I read the chap­ter about these words. The first thing I did in the morn­ing is open up a cur­rent project. I took the list and ran through my new man­u­script (com­put­ers are great for this).  Lo and behold (no sur­prise) there were those words—in excess—until I took them out. And, yes, it did enhance the clar­i­ty of my text. The point is, the read­er won’t know what I did. But the read­er will enjoy what I did. In oth­er words Dreyer’s Eng­lish is like hav­ing an ear­ly copy editor.

The essen­tial point is that the writ­ing can always be improved. It does not mat­ter than I am such-and-such an age, that I have been writ­ing for all these many years, or that I have pub­lished x num­ber of books, and have won some recog­ni­tion. I can get bet­ter. Every writer can. Why should you not want to be?

Read (and use) Dreyer’s Eng­lish. You’ll be a bet­ter writer.