Style: short and sweet

If you came to this book looking for rules about writing, this chapter is the closest you're going to get.

This is not, however, a chapter about grammar. We're not going to make a fuss about whether you split infinitives, or start sentences with 'and'. We're not going to tell you whether it's better to ask 'Who do you love?' or 'Whom do you love?' And we're not going to try to persuade you that you should choose carefully whether to say 'think', 'believe' or 'feel'. In disputes like these, we don't have a dog in the race.

Our rules - suggestions, really - will help you make what you write more concise, more direct and clearer. That is, they're about making your writing short and sweet - sweet in this case meaning not sugary or mellifluous but direct and to the point.

You don't have to read this chapter to get something out of this book. If you are looking help with a specific library- related writing project, you can go directly to the chapter that covers that genre of writing for some quick, basic help. If, on the other hand, you want to improve your communication skills for all the writing assignments you encounter in your work, you are in the right place.

Why short and sweet?

As an academic librarian, we're sure you'll agree, you are nothing if not busy.

On a given day, you might attend a committee meeting, teach a library instruction session, spend time on the reference desk, gather data for a report, dash off a series of e-mails and help a professor with a database - all before lunch.

Your colleagues are just as busy. And so, of course, are the professors, administrators, undergraduates and graduate students you work with every day. When you write at work, these are the people you are writing for - your audience.

We talk more about audience, and how to adapt your writing to specific audiences, in the next chapter. For now, we will focus on one fundamental idea:

Busy people appreciate writing that is clear, concise and direct.

We don't want to spend time puzzling over what our colleagues are trying to tell us. We don't want to read 10 paragraphs of introductory material before we get to the one that explains why the document is important in the first place. We don't want to slog through 10 pages to learn something that we could have been told in a single sentence. In short, we want to read it, understand it and get on with it - quickly.

Let's look at an example.

Here's how the East Forthright University Libraries begins its mission statement:

Example 1: The Libraries strives to give all its users the tools and materials they need.

Those 14 words seem perfectly clear, don't they? No matter who we are, or why we've come to the library, the staff is going to help us get what we ask for. If we work or study at East Forthright, this mission statement gives us a warm feeling: the library is here to help.

We're willing to wager, however, that at some point in your career you have seen East Forthright's fine sentiment expressed much more in the way Humbug State University Library says it in its own mission statement:

Example 2: In this era of rapid technological change, it is the goal of the Libraries to address the information needs of each group among its diverse set of users - faculty, undergraduates, graduate students, staff and the general public. With this goal in mind, the Libraries endeavors to continually review and update its collections and resources to ensure that it is providing access to those tools and materials - both in print and electronically - that best meet the University's evolving mission of scholarship.

Humbug State uses 69 more words, 83 in total. Yet not a single one of those words tells us anything that isn't expressed in East Forthright's 14. Quite the opposite: many of the extra words and phrases detract from meaning and make the sentence more difficult to understand.

 The opening clause, for example - 'in this era of rapid technological change' - misdirects the reader by suggesting that what follows will be about technology or how to respond to it. But it isn't; the sentence is about the Libraries' commitment to public service.

 The Library's attempt to be inclusive by listing the members of its 'diverse set of users' inevitably ends up excluding some of them - What about alumni? Doctors at the medical center? Visiting scholars? Public officials? - in a way that East Forthright's simple phrase 'all its users' does not.

 Similarly, by promising to update both print and electronic resources, the sentence passes over things that are neither, such as sound recordings and microfilms.

And the Humbug State Library is not speaking to us directly. Instead of saying clearly that it wants to help us, personally, Humbug State says that it is reviewing its collections in order to meet an undefined and therefore vague 'mission of scholarship'.

Readers of Humbug State's mission statement don't get a warm feeling. It is likely that they get no feeling at all; they are numb from plodding through the text and trying to decipher long, indirect, convoluted sentences.

The bottom line: East Forthright and Humbug State are trying to express the same idea, but only East Forthright makes the idea clear and forceful. Why? Because East Forthright expresses the idea concisely and in plain language. Which brings us to something important:

Short sentences and plain language are usually the best way to say something.

Not all your sentences will be short and not all your language will be plain, nor should they be. But when you get into the habit of using short, declarative sentences and plain language whenever possible, your writing will become clearer, more direct and easier to understand. That's what this chapter will help you do.

You have no control over how others communicate with you. But you can take charge of your own writing and strive, through precise communication, to make patrons and colleagues happier and make work more productive for everyone.

This can only reflect well on you. How many times have you seen a job ad for a library position that asked for 'excellent oral and written communication skills'? Libraries, after all, are in the information business, and they need people who can make information clear. Your ability to do so will make you a valuable asset - and a valued colleague.

And, of course, others may respond to your example and write more clearly and directly themselves.

Where to begin? The way to make your writing short and sweet - or at least shorter and sweeter - is to focus on your writing style.

What is style?

When we talk about a writer's style, we can mean three different things.

One is whether the writer adheres to a set of formal guidelines, such as those in the Chicago Manual of Style, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association or the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (aka Vancouver style). These style guides ensure that academic writers follow uniform practices when it comes to citations, quotations, bibliographies, numbers, and much more. Journals in library science and information science generally require either Chicago or APA style; if you do scholarly work in other disciplines, you may use other guides. We won't concern ourselves with such style guides here, although you can find a list of them at the end of the book.

Another meaning of style is the writer's individuality, or voice, as it comes through in the choices he or she makes - what tone to set, whether to be colloquial or formal, what turns of phrase to emphasize, whether to sound friendly or distant. These questions hinge on who exactly we're writing for, and we deal with them in the chapter on audience.

The kind of style we want to talk about in this chapter involves readability. Writing is highly readable when sentences and paragraphs are short, clear, direct and easy to understand. Conversely, writing is less readable when sentences and paragraphs are long, unclear, indirect and abstruse. In this chapter, we will look at common problems that can make writing wordy and hard to follow, and we will show you what to do about them. But before we get to the nuts and bolts, we want to put this on the table:

The best way to improve your writing style is to make a habit of revising.

Revising: the key to improving your style

With our guidelines in mind, you should start to produce writing that is shorter and sweeter. You'll think twice before using...