Do I Make Myself Clear? Why Writing Well Matters

By Harold Evans
2017
416 pages / 8 hours
Nonfiction

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What does it mean to write really well? For one of the great editors of our time, Harold Evans, it is all about one thing: clarity. Thus, the title of his brilliant book on writing is in the form of a question: Do I Make Myself Clear?

First, I recommend this book to anyone who intends to write anything. It is the best primer on straightforward clear writing that I know. Even now, I am shaking in my boots because of all the poor writing that will go into these 500 words.

For Evans, it is an almost religious commitment to eliminate every single word that is not doing something important. You should never say anything with 55 words if you can say it equally well with 34. And while everyone who writes should read this book, you can probably see why I think it is an especially useful book for preachers. It is a textbook on how to eliminate the unnecessary. Make every word count! Your congregation will rise up and call you blessed if you read this book. Virtually every lesson he gives about writing can be translated into speaking.

Among the great merits of this book are the hundreds of examples he gives of bad writing, which he then edits into good writing. Here is Evans’s pithy corollary to Murphy’s Law:

Murphy’s Law – anything that can go wrong, will go wrong – is vindicated every day. I propose the Evans Corollary: anything that goes wrong will always be wordier than anything that goes right. (chapter 3)

One of my favorite examples of bad writing is where a caption writer unwittingly implicates the Boston police:

Monday, April 15, 2013, photo, taken approximately 10-20 minutes before the blast, shows Tamerlan Tsarnaev, center-right who was dubbed Suspect No. 1 and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, center-left, who was dubbed Suspect No. 2 in the Boston Marathon bombings by law enforcement. (chapter 3)

Yikes.

One of the more intriguing aspects of the book is that some writing is intended to be bad. That is, it strives to make itself as unclear as possible. Its intention is not to be understood correctly but rather to be misunderstood or not understood at all. A good deal of government writing seems to fall into this category. Thus, for Evans clear writing is not only better writing, but it is also a kind of moral duty. The world is better when we communicate clearly.

One of my favorite chapters in the book is called “Ten Shortcuts to Making Yourself Clear.” Full of examples, it bears study and re-study. One could actually become a better writer in one afternoon by starting to practice these 10 suggestions. I’m guessing it might take a lifetime to master.

Allow me to offer a final word to preachers. The question we do not ask often enough about our sermons is this: would my 27-minute sermon be better as a 25-minute sermon? Could I eliminate two minutes without losing any of the meaning and, in fact, make what I am trying to say even clearer? Until we have asked and answered that question, the sermon isn’t done.