OK, sorry, back on topic. Today on Garrison Keillor’s short radio progam, The Writer’s Almanac, I heard this poem by Harvey Shapiro.

New York Notes

1. Caught on a side street in heavy traffic, I said to the cabbie, I should have
walked. He replied, I should have been a doctor.

2. When can I get on the 11:33 I ask the guy in the information booth at the Atlantic Avenue Station. When they open the doors, he says.

I am home among my people.

This short and pungent poem reminded me of advice from one of my writing mentors, Maurice Cottingham. Maurice is a long-time copywriter and executive speechwriter for CSC, EDS, and other such high-class joints.

Maurice told me once that perhaps the best way to end a piece is with a great quote. Maruice was, of course, referring to pieces like feature stories and case studies.

But after hearing Mr. Shapiro’s first two stanzas, I’d have to say that Maurice’s advice applies to poems as well.

Thanks, Maurice. You’re the best.

But there’s a lot more to be said for writing that’s simple and straightforward.

I was headed home from my mom’s yesterday with a book I had borrowed. Trustee from the Toolroom, by Nevil Shute, one of Britain’s best storytellers and the author of On the Beach and A Town Like Alice, among other small gems.

Pulling up in my driveway, something compelled me to open the book and read the first sentence. Here’s what I got:

“West Ealing is a suburb to the west of London, and Keith Stewart lives there in the lower part of No. 56 Somerset Road.”

It doesn’t get any plainer than that. But now I know my protagonist; and the simplicity of his introduction, particularly the repetition in saying that West Ealing is west of London, seems to tell me that there is something simple about him as well. I kept reading.

Two pages later, I found Shute writing about Stewart’s machine shop:

“Here he had a six-inch Herbert lathe for heavy work, a three-and-a-half-inch Myford, and a Boley watchmaker’s lathe. He had a Senior milling machine and a Boxford shaper, a large and a small drill press, and a vast array of tools ready to hand.”

Again — a straightforward, precise description. Something in it seems to tell us that Stewart’s life is organized in a similar way: precisely, plainly.

This is not simple language used simplistically. Shute is too good a writer for that. Rather, this is simple language used for effect. And, simple language used to introduce a tremendously good story. Because if you’ve got a good story, it doesn’t need to be dressed up or made clever.

Suffice it to say that I spent 10 minutes in the driveway reading, and another two hours that evening in bed. Once I got hooked, I couldn’t stop.

That’s the power of simple writing.

UPDATE: I spent three hours in bed the next night finishing the book. I couldn’t put it down.

Well, I was at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton this weekend, and I saw a poster with a missing call for action.

Unfortunately, the poster was about domestic violence.

It read something like this: “Have you every been hit, kicked, or pushed by your partner? Does he control where you go or who you see? Does he act excessively jealous or possessive? If so, you might be a victim of domestic abuse!”

In marketing writing, the bit I just described is known as “identifying your audience’s pain points.” (In this case, identifying their actual pain.) This should be followed by offering a solution — and then instructions telling the audience what to do next. That’s the call to action.

For example, in this case, the poster might have read, “Our local domestic violence shelter is open to women throughout the Miami Valley.  Call us 24 hours a day at xxx-xxx-xxxx. We are here to listen and to help.”

Unfortunately, the poster included none of that. It just ended with the stark warning, “You might be a victim of domestic abuse!” I have to think of women across the Miami Valley reading that and thinking to themselves, “thanks for the tip, a-hole. Now what am I supposed to do?”

To the extent it helps, here are numbers for actual places in the greater Dayton region where women and their children can seek help for domestic abuse:

• Dayton: Artemis Center, 24-hour hotline for domestic abuse: 937-222-SAFE (937-222-7233)
• Greenville: Shelter from Violence, hotline: 937-548-2020
• Sidney: New Choices, hotline: 937-498-4981
• Troy: Family Abuse Center of Miami Valley, hotline: 937-335-7148
• Xenia: Greene County Domestic Violence Project, hotline: 937-426-2334

Good reading for anyone who cherishes this volume — not necessarily as a style guide — but as an embodiment of concise writing.

Correspondent E.F., a great writer and good egg, writes today with a concern from one of her clients …

He seems happy but commented that I use a lot of one-sentence paragraphs. I never noticed this, but it’s probably a holdover from reporting work. Is there a rule against this? He wasn’t really complaining but sort of musing about it because he says writing workshops claim this is a no-no.

My response? One sentence paragraphs are perfectly fine — as long as they are used smartly and judiciously. Moreover, there’s no rule against them, despite what high school English teachers or “workshop leaders” might tell you — and what you might find in Strunk & White’s Elements of Style.

As a rule, single sentences should not be written or printed as paragraphs. An exception may be made of sentences of transition …

But I don’t use S&W as a rulebook, just as a very general primer on good writing — so I disregard this “rule,” and don’t consider it authoritative.

Moreover, William Safire advises against any pedantic insistence that one-sentence paragraphs must never be used. And Bryan Garner writes in his Modern American Usage that “long sentences slow the reading and create a solemn, portentous impression; short sentences speed the reading and the thought.” Couldn’t the same be said of long and short paragraphs?

I advised E.F. to tell her client — if she had to give him an explanation — that in this age of short attention spans, short paragraphs are often preferred to long paragraphs, and one-sentence paragraphs are perfectly acceptable. Short paragraphs help readers access your copy easily and digest it in manageable chunks. They also help draw attention to important points that are significant enough to stand alone — a critical factor to consider knowing that many readers are actually “scanners.”

Of course, it wouldn’t make sense to have every paragraph be one sentence long. Good writers vary the length of their paragraphs, much as they vary the length of their sentences — as part of the process of crafting clear, readable, resonant prose.

• Core of my being — If you run across this in written form, just click the back button or close the book. If you actually hear the phrase spoken aloud, you need to exit the coffeeshop you’re in immediately and make sure the woman wearing the Sylvia Plath tee isn’t following you.
• Think outside the box — If you can’t think of another phrase to use, you should be stuffed in a box.
• Quantum leap — Unless you’re a physicist, avoid the word quantum, period.
• Paradigm shift — Finding a new way to shaft the consumer is not a paradigm shift. That’s business as usual. If you actually encounter a paradigm shift, feel free to use the term.
• Granular — If someone says a report needs to be more granular, don’t hesitate, just kick them in the balls. Granular is a word used by corporate weenies because they think it makes them sound more intelligent.
• Confidence is high — If you’ve ever used that in a sentence, you were high.
• Manage expectations — What this really means is, “we don’t know if this will work, so let’s make sure that if we fail, we can say that we expected this might fail.” Just say what you mean. Let people manage their own expectations.
• Credibility gap — Political speak for calling a group a bunch of goddamn liars.
• Less than stellar — As in, “Keanu Reeves’ less-than-stellar performance in, well, everything he’s ever been in.” Just say his performance sucked.
• Critical mass — Again, unless you’re a physicist, stay away from their lingo.
• Irregardless — WTF? I still don’t know what that non-word is intended to mean. Just don’t use it.

In any case, I needn’t tell you that your writing shouldn’t include any of these tired old cliches.

Publications coach Daphne Gray-Grant, in her weekly newsletter, Power Writing, summarizes Glass’s points thusly:

Stories and anecdotes are central to interesting writing because no matter how boring the material, the momentum of the form will carry the reader/listener along. (Glass compares hearing or reading an anecdote to being on a train.)

Interesting stories, by themselves, are not enough. They must have a point. Glass calls this the “moment of reflection.” This is the big payoff for the reader or listener. It’s when the writer shows the connection between the story that grabbed your interest and the idea that just might change your life.

Gray-Grant asks her readers this: “This week as you’re writing, ask yourself: Are you telling enough stories? And are you connecting the dots for your reader?”

Are you?

Tom Wheeler’s delightful book Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails explains how the President’s adept use of the telegraph helped him win the Civil War. In a new essay, Wheeler expounds on how reading Lincoln’s “t-mails” changed his own email style. To whit:

When he used an electronic message Lincoln maximized its impact by using carefully chosen words. His August 1864 telegram to General Grant, ‘Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke’ could not have been more explicitly expressed. Emails, on the other hand, have tended to become the communications equivalent of casual Fridays, substituting comfort and ease for discipline and rigor.

Fascinating!

Lifehacker discusses how to improve your email habits and “wrangle spaghetti email messages from the clueless into more effective communication,” with tips on writing better subject lines, writing to get an actual response from your reader, and getting emails to your correct mailbox.

… were released at the height of [Rowling's] popularity, and it was clear that no one dared edit The Sacred Word of Potter; as the result, the books were long, rambling, unfocused, and boring.

I’d stop short of saying the books were boring; however, I found it painful to find bloated narrative diluting what had previously been clean, lively writing — a sure sign that Ms. Rowling had succumbed to the same famous-author-no-longer-needs-an-editor syndrome that had taken down Anne Rice.

I found myself wishing that when Ms. Rowling had turned in her manuscript, a tough but kindly gentleman editor had sat down with her and said (in a British accent, of course): “See here, J.K., this is a lovely first draft, but you’ve got to cut it by at least a third. Go back to the basics, darling! Ask yourself sentence by sentence, can this be tighter? Can this be cut? Can this go away completely?”

At least that’s what I wish had happened. What about you?