Even though Flesch
wrote his book in the 1940’s, it’s instruction is relevant for today’s
writer. I found The Art of Readable
Writing to be an entertaining and interesting way to learn how to write better.
The book is made
up of twenty-one short chapters. I spent
a couple minutes each day just reading one chapter and absorbing whatever point
it made. He starts with debunking
Aristotle (“his rules were meant for political speeches, pleadings in court,
and funeral orations. You’ll have rather
few occasions for these three types of writings”) although, I still recommend
reading Aristotle’s books on rhetoric and writing. (Besides, they’re free
downloads on Amazon).
Chapter two
discusses getting inside other people’s minds in order to effectively
communicate your ideas. Don’t assume
your audience knows more than they do.
In this instance he’s talking about people who write non-fiction
information. He provides examples from government pamphlets that are designed
to give people instructions to help them in whatever situation. These pamphlets were largely incoherent
because they assumed the reader had the type of informed background that
allowed them to understand the rhetoric used.
Wow. The government using our tax
money to furnish us with useless material.
Surprise, surprise.
Other chapters
deal with shaping ideas after the writer has done his research but before he
starts writing his book, the art of readability, developing an ear for writing
(how to write as we talk but not really), degrees and results of plain talk and
how to be human even when writing factually rather than creatively.
Every chapter is
loaded with examples from writings from newspapers, journalists, government
legalese, magazine articles and advertisements, to name a few. Thanks to these I now also own a book from
Pulitzer prize winning journalist Hal Boyle (“Help, Help! Another Day!”-funnnnnyyyyy!!) For each topic Flesch examples of both good
writing as well as bad (like aforementioned government pamphlets).
Two particularly
interesting chapters are devoted to showing how our sentences have shrunk over
the ages but our words have expanded. He
compares English prose by Hakluyt written about 1600 AD to a modern
passage. Hakluyt’s sentences average
about ninety words per sentence while the modern essay only had twenty! Nevertheless,
he asserts that “Our sentences have grown shorter in number of words, but these
words themselves have grown longer and richer in meaning. And while we don’t need so many words any
more to express our thoughts, the words we do use carry a much heavier load of
ideas. He concludes that “our modern
short sentences are an illusion as far as ideas are concerned”.
He has a chapter
about unpredictable words followed by a chapter about unpredictable readers.
Both chapters are to help the writer make sure that he chooses the right word
to convey what it is you actually want to say.
Feslcher adds an
appendix at the end of the book that includes a readability formula and a
reading list which sites the sources of all his examples. I found this useful so I could look up books
I could order for myself (as I already mentioned.)
My verdict? A great book to add to a writer’s library.
2 comments:
Sounds to be a very helpful book. When many people think of writing I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the kind of stuff that we bloggers read and actually write about.
However, I actually write a lot of technical and training material for my job. This book actually seems to address that type of writing.
You're a technical writer, Brian? I didn't know that. That's interesting. There's another book I'm going to review. It's how to get work as a writer and it includes technical writing.
I think that you would enjoy this book and it deals a lot with the mechanics of non fiction writing such as what you do in your job. Have a good day!
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