Prose Style and Clarity Examples of Strong Writing

Prose Style and Clarity: Examples of Strong Writing from MGT 360 Wayne Smith, Ph. D. Department of Management CSU Northridge ws@csun. edu

Superior, Contemporary Writing • Employ higher-order writing strategies – Always elevate your writing (throughout this class and beyond) – All of the following examples are from my outstanding students • Artful Prose – Short Sentences, Noun Phrases, Verb Phrases, Adjectives and Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions and Coordination, Dependent Clauses, Sentence Openers and Inversion, Branching Sentences, Appositives, Interrogatories, Exclamatories, Imperatives, Parallelism, Cohesion • Style – Actions, Characters, Cohesion and Coherence, Emphasis, Motivation, Global Coherence, Concision, Shape, Elegance, Ethics

Exemplars – Artful Prose • Short Sentences – “We are a small firm. ” – “The problem was never fully resolved. ” • Noun Phrases – “This is where the burden fell on my shoulders. ” (emphasis added) • Verb Phrases – “This not only allowed the business to get back on track, but also began replenishing my trust in him. ” (emphases added) • Adjectives and Adverbs – “Service makes a good restaurant amazing. ” – “There is a restaurant. Its look externally is neither fancy nor beautiless. ” – “Starting a digital film is insultingly easy: you would press a button, watch the first clip, and then leave. ” • Prepositions – “Of all the experiences, one case came up to my mind instantly. ”

Exemplars – Artful Prose (cont. ) • Conjunctions and Coordination – “The manager approved my idea, and now every week I have the employees and their supervisor sign their report. ” • Dependent Clauses – “I suggested changes that will help the students as a whole and also included a way to advance the skills of the other upcoming and continuing tutors in the program. ” – “My parents, who loved me dearly, wanted to instill a strong work ethic in me when they required me to get a job. ” • Sentence Openers and Inversion – “Yet through all of this, I never complained to any coworker, manager, or any of the bosses. ”

Exemplars – Artful Prose (cont. ) • “Left-Branching” Sentences – “On the rare occasions that they do notify me, they send an email saying a package in my name has arrived. ” – “As I returned to my desk thinking on how mad this client sounded over the phone, I heard screaming coming from the reception area. ” • “Right-Branching” Sentences – “Throughout my years as a Youth Advisor, the only time that the staff would come together as a whole was in the first fifteen minutes of work to discuss any individual problems that we may have faced the day prior with any of the kids that the staff should know about. ” • Appositives (one noun phrase redefining another, prior noun phrase) – “I faced my most difficult organizational challenge while working for the San Diego Scout Shop, a retail store owned by the Boy Scouts of America. ”

Exemplars – Artful Prose (cont. ) • Interrogatories – “For example, are safety measures taken seriously? Are consequences given for unsafe behavior? Are sanitary regulations kept up-to-date? ” – Have you ever been given your supervisor’s responsibilities? ” • Exclamatories – “I hate my manager!” – “We need trainers who are willing to work hard!” • Imperatives – “The burden is now on me to motivate and encourage my students to stay focused and to strive harder than before in order to do better. ” • Parallelism – “Work tasks were monotonous: unchallenging, unrewarding, and unsatisfying. ” – “Managers have many responsibilities, and that includes organizing, motivating, coaching, and staffing. ” • Cohesion – “After working there for another six months since the changes, I resigned. ”

Exemplars – Style – Actions • It is important to understand how we express judgments. • Perhaps the most important aspect of style is the improvement in clarity. • Make Main Characters Subjects – Examples • Make Important Actions Verbs – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Characters • Definition – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Cohesion • Readers judge a sequence of sentences to be cohesive based on how each sentence ends and the next begins. • Cohesion is about the sense of flow. • Put old, familiar information before new, unfamiliar information. – Examples • End sentences with information readers cannot predict. – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Coherence • Readers judge a whole passage to be coherent based on how all of the sentences in a passage cumulatively begin. • Coherence is about a sense of the whole. • Coherence is chiefly about a relatively small set of related ideas about a single topic. Important characters, real or abstract, aren’t changed abruptly. – Examples – “So, I came in to work, tied on an apron, put on slip-resistant shoe covers, covered my face with a beard-guard, put on gloves, and before I knew it received a crash course from the meat department’s management and store manager in the basics of the [meat] department and the closing duties for that night. ”

Exemplars – Style – Emphasis • Emphasis primarily concerns how a sentence ends. • Emphasis can involve complex grammar. – Examples • Emphasis can involve complex meaning. – Examples • Emphasis can involve stress. – “I believe that every employee who wants to move up should not fear failure, but should instead fear that they will be in the same position that they were in last year. ”

Exemplars – Style – Motivation • Getting your introduction right helps readers see everything that follows as clear and coherent. Writers have to help motivate readers so that they want to read carefully. Writers have to let readers know what to expect so that they can read more knowledgeably. • Establish a shared context – Examples • State the problem – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Motivation (cont. ) • Distinguish between “conceptual” problems (what should the reader think? )… – Examples • …and “practical” problems (what should the reader do? ). • State the Solution making clear both the “condition”… – Examples • …and the “cost” of the solution. – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Global Coherence • Forecast important themes at both the paragraph-level and the sectionlevel. • Readers must see how everything in a section or whole is relevant to its point. This involves: • • • Background or context Points of sections and the whole Reasons supporting a point Evidence, facts, or data supporting a reason An explanation of reasoning or methods Consideration of other points of view – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Global Coherence (cont. ) • Readers must see how the parts of your document are ordered. There are three kinds order: • Chronological – Earlier to later (or vice versa), a narrative, or as a cause and effect • Coordinate – Importance (e. g. , “first”, “second”), complexity (e. g. , more important, in addition) • Logical – By example and generalization (or vice versa), premise and conclusion (or vice versa), or assertion and contradiction – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Concision • Readers think you write concisely when you use only enough words to say what you mean. This involves: • • • Deleting words that mean little or nothing. Deleting words that repeat the meaning of other words. Deleting words implied by other words. Replacing a phrase with a word. Changing negatives to affirmatives. Deleting useless adjectives and adverbs. – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Concision (cont. ) • Use meta-discourse (the writer’s intensions, directions to the reader, or the structure of the text) sparingly. – Examples • Use hedges (hedges qualify certainty) sparingly. – Examples • Use intensifiers (intensifiers increase certainty) sparingly. – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Shape • Get to the subject quickly. – Examples • Get to the verb and object quickly. – Examples • Start with your point. – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Shape (cont. ) • Use a resumptive modifier. – Examples • Use a summative modifier. – Examples • Use a free modifier. – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Shape (cont. ) • Coordination is the foundation of a gracefully shaped sentence. – Examples • Balanced coordination involves going from shorter phrases to longer phrases… – Examples • …and from simpler phrases to more complex phrases. – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Elegance • What makes a sentence graceful is a balance and symmetry among its parts, echoing one another in sound, rhythm, structure, and meaning. Climatic emphasis at the end of a sentence involves: • “Weighty” words (a strong word, or better, a pair of them) – Examples • “Of” + Weighty word (prepositional phrase introduced by “of”) – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Elegance (cont. ) • Echoing Salience (repeat the sound or meaning of an earlier word or phrase) – Examples • Chiasmus (the second part is reversed from the first part) – Examples • Suspension (delay and heighten a sense of climax) – Examples

Exemplars – Style – Ethics • Write to others as you would have others write to you. • Don’t write with unintended obscurity. – Be clear, but don’t oversimplify. • Don’t write with intended misdirection. – Be especially clear who erred, who pays, and who dies. • Don’t write with rationalized opacity. – Be clear—even and especially—about complex things. • Don’t write with salutary complexity. – Don’t claim that complexity is good for a reader. • Don’t write with subversive clarity. – Don’t claim that clarity is bad for a reader.

References • The categories for the Artful Prose section of this presentation were excerpted and adapted from the following book: – Tufte, V. (2006), Artful Sentences, Graphics Press, Connecticut. • The categories for the Style section of this presentation were excerpted and adapted from the following book: – Williams, J. and Bizup, J. (2015), Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace (5 th ed. ), Pearson, Boston. • All of the examples were pulled directly my students’ work. It can only be my high privilege to be able to work with, and learn from, these motivated and talented student-professionals.