Clarity

A cellular phone service once aired a series of television commercials that made me laugh. They all involved people in ridiculous situations caused by bad phone connections. In one, a babysitter misunderstands a mother’s message (something about being home in an hour) and coats the children with flour. In another, the wife asks her husband to bring home a movie — something old — and he brings home a monkey with a cold. The point was to convince viewers that their phone service would have prevented such miscommunication. Silly, but memorable. 

Writers also need to be concerned with the clarity of their communication. The most basic purpose of writing is to transmit information. So, getting your message through is of utmost importance.

There is no magic trick to writing with clarity. Employing the writing process is helpful, because it gives opportunity to revise, reorder, and clear up what is fuzzy. A solid grasp of the basics of grammar and usage is important. Clear thinking and a sense of organization helps. But there are many ways to muddy up writing and force your reader to guess at your meaning.

Imagine a waitress asking a customer if he’d like a drink refill. He replies, “Give me a second.” Moments later, he’s surprised when the waitress returns with another full glass. He only wanted some time to make up his mind, but his choice of words left open two possibilities. That’s a communication problem.

Church bulletins and signs are famous for confusing readers with unclear writing. Fortunately, they are sometimes funny as well as unclear:

• The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
• For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
• Don’t let worry kill you. Let the church help!
• The Reverend Merriweather spoke briefly, much to the delight of the audience.

Just leave out a punctuation mark or two and you can really mess things up:

• King Charles walked and talked half an hour after his head was chopped off. (huh?)
• King Charles walked and talked. Half an hour after, his head was chopped off. (oh!)

Just put a space where it doesn’t belong and you can really confuse your reader:

• Look what’s in the road ahead!
• Look what’s in the road! A head!
• What’s that you’re dragging along behind?
• What’s that you’re dragging, a long behind?

It’s not likely your writing errors will be quite this amusing, so learn to identify the particular kinds of clarity problems you struggle with. For now, here’s some advice: Before you’re done, read your work as though you were someone else.

One of the reasons students lack clarity in writing is their inability to read from another’s perspective. Don’t assume that just because your message is clear to you, it will be clear to the reader. Step out of yourself and read as if you were seeing the words for the first time. Ask yourself if all information has been included that an ordinary reader would require. Ask yourself if the words and phrases you’ve selected communicate exactly what you had hoped. Revise any parts that could cause confusion.

Good writing is clear from the first reading. It shouldn’t be necessary to go back and reread any portion of our work in order to make sense of it. Readers might have to work to understand our ideas, but they shouldn’t have to work to understand our language.

Here are a just a few tips to help keep your writing clear:

1. Include all necessary information. Don’t assume your reader knows what you know. Don’t be patronizing, but say everything that needs to be said.
2. Be grammatically correct. Bad usage and mechanics can throw readers into confusion. Punctuate well. Place modifiers carefully. Make sure your pronouns have clear antecedents, etc.
3. Eliminate wordiness. Say things concisely. Vary the lengths of your sentences, but generally resist getting too complex. Short, simple words are usually better than long, elaborate ones.
4. Use transitions wisely. Learn strategies for moving from one idea to the next. Show how one thought is related to the one that follows.
5. Avoid careless errors. It’s easy to leave out important words or repeat yourself unintentionally. Lots of mistakes happen just because writers aren't careful about proofreading. 

These are only a handful of things to think about. As you mature as a writer, you will get better at recognizing and eliminating vagueness and imprecision in your writing.