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general advice on writing,  good style, grammar, and clarity

general advice on writing, good style, grammar, and clarity

The Elements of Style

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best-selling short guide to good writing style

This style guide is a well-loved American classic. It was originally written during the first world war by William Strunk who was then a professor at Cornell, and it has since been updated to its third edition by E.B.White, one of his former pupils. You might wonder why it’s still in print and just as popular as ever. The answer is obvious to anyone who has ever opened a book on grammar in search of solutions to common writing problems.

The Elements of StyleStrunk’s clever strategy was to edit down the complexities of English grammar into just those few basic elements which would help people to improve their writing skills. His central rule is to keep everything as simple as possible – or “Omit needless words”. For instance, he kicks off immediately with the apostrophe, the comma, and other points of punctuation which create the most common problems.

Only when he has cleared these out of the way does he get down to what he calls the ‘Elementary Principles of Composition’. One of these first principles is something which I write on three of every four student essays: “Make the paragraph the unit of composition” and “Begin each paragraph with a sentence that supports the topic”. This is the foundation on which he builds his main suggestions for clear writing, which are focused on always creating the direct, the specific, and the concrete statement, rather than striving for special effects.

His approach sometimes seems a little old-fashioned when it includes grammatical terms such as ‘nonrestrictive clauses’ which we don’t really need to know. But every point of advice is well illustrated by examples of good and bad practice, so the reader is left in no doubt in recognising the problem and how to correct it.

He skips lightly over quotation and references, saving most of his energy for an extended chapter on words which are commonly confused or misused – such as Among/Between and That/Which.

The final chapter added by E.B.White is a list of twenty-one guidelines for clear and good writing from which anyone could profit. The suggestions range from keeping the audience in mind, avoiding pretension and too many qualifiers, to hints on the choice of effective vocabulary.

I saw this book recommended in a web site design manual published only a few weeks ago, and it’s certainly true that anyone who needs a brief and clear introduction to the principles of effective writing should get a copy. In fact Strunk’s insistence on the pursuit of brevity is particularly appropriate for the digital era. It’s also amazingly good value.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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William Strunk Jr and E.B. White, The Elements of Style (4th edition) London: Longman, 1999, pp.105, ISBN 020530902X

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The Essence of Computing Projects

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project writing skills for higher education

Projects are now a major part of most undergraduate and postgraduate courses – especially in sciences, business studies, and information technology. Students are required to draw on a number of different but important skills to complete their projects, and it’s not easy to know what’s involved. The Essence of Computing Projects is designed to explain what’s required. It covers surveying the literature, project writing skills, documenting software, time management, project management, and presentation skills.

Project writing skills The chapters follow the logical sequence of undertaking a project, starting from defining the nature of research itself, choosing a project and writing a proposal, then planning what you are going to write – including timing and scheduling.

When it comes to the process of searching and reviewing the literature, Christian Dawson makes sensible distinctions between what is required at undergraduate and postgraduate level. The chapter which deals with actually writing the project confronts some of the most common problems – and how to overcome them. Running out of time, dealing with interruptions and computer crashes; dealing with your supervisor; and working in teams.

The latter part of the book deals with the presentation of your report in written form. Here he stresses the importance of abstracts and structure, presenting data in graphs, pie charts, and bar charts, academic referencing, and two items of special interest – commenting on program code and writing user guides.

Finally he deals with the oral presentation skills required to present your project. It also looks forward to what follows in academic terms – publishing your work, funding, and intellectual ownership and copyright issues.

If you have a project as part of the next stage in your studies, this guide will give you an excellent account of what’s required. You will have to flesh out the details – but that’s exactly as it should be, isn’t it.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Christian W. Dawson, The Essence of Computing Projects – A Student’s Guide, London: Prentice Hall, 2000, pp.176, ISBN: 013021972X

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The First Five Pages

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a writer’s guide to staying out of the slush pile

Noah Lukeman is a New York literary agent with a number of top-ranking authors as his clients. He has also written a number of books on the craft of writing (see The Art of Punctuation for instance) so he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the literary marketplace – in which it must be said so many people wish to make their mark. Publishers and literary agents receive hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts each month – almost all of which are rejected. The First Five Pages is his advice for staying out of the slush pile.

The First Five PagesIt’s the job of these publishing professionals to be discriminating, and it’s the job of the writer to produce a manuscript that stands out among the competition. Those outstanding qualities, Lukeman argues, have to be apparent from the first five pages – otherwise no agent or publisher will bother reading further. In fact he claims – and I believe him – that five sentences is enough. His advice when it comes is quite bracing. First of all he dismisses the supremacy of plot, and lets you in to a secret from the professional’s office:

Agents and editors often ignore synopses and plot outlines; instead, we skip right to the actual manuscript. If the writing is good, then we’ll go back and consider the synopsis

The other thing which creates an immediate impression on agents and publishers is the physical presentation of text. He takes a really strict line here.You should use clean, new A4 paper, and the text should be printed at high quality, double spaced with one inch margins and indented dialogue and paragraph first lines. The slightest falling off in these standards gives the reader every reason to chuck your work into the reject bin.

Next comes the surgical removal of excessive adjectives and adverbs – the most common mistake of would-be writers. This is followed by advice on the sound of language, and how to avoid unwanted alliteration, assonance, and verbal echoes. The same is true for any comparisons or metaphors you use. They should be fresh, original, and to the point – otherwise, leave them out.

On literary style his advice is to avoid mannerism and extremes, and he nails down two excellent examples of the ‘academic’ and ‘experimental’ style of writing.

There’s a section on dialogue and eradicating all that ‘he said … she retorted’ sort of thing. He warns specifically against the easy trap of using dialogue to fill in the back story. That is, having characters explicate matters they would both already know (for the benefit of the reader). The rule – as ever – is show, don’t tell.

The same sort of rigour is well-advised over point of view and narrative mode. Many amateur writers use the first person mode thinking it will allow them the chance to show off, but all they end up doing is littering their story with too much biographical dross, and failing to create a consistent and credible or interesting narrator.

Next comes the creation of character. This is a difficult topic on which to generalise. Some great novels have memorable characters about whose appearance we know very little (Kafka’s Joseph K for instance) and others are memorable merely for what they do – such as Catherine Earnshaw, who even dies half way through Wuthering Heights.

The later chapters deal with some of the more subtle points of being creative – knowing what to leave out, striking the right tone, how to stay focused on the main event, and how to deal with setting and pace.

Many aspiring writers will complain that their favourite authors ignore these guidelines – and Lukeman admits that great writers break all the rules. But what he’s offering here is a guide to common mistakes which should be avoided. As he says, would-be writers from California to England to Turkey to Japan … do exactly the same things wrong

To get into print in the first instance you have to obey the literary norms of the day. And that’s what this book The First Five Pages is doing in its own modest way. Noah Lukeman just wants to show you how to stand out from the also-rans in the slush pile, as something worthy of notice.

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© Roy Johnson 2010

Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised edition, 2010, pp.191, ISBN: 0199575282

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The Forest for the Trees

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advice to writers – from an experienced editor

All authors, editors and publishers should read this book. Even those who think they know all about writing and the publishing process will find fresh ideas and perceptive insights. Betsy Lerner has a wealth of experience, from her youthful beginnings at Simon & Schuster to becoming executive editor at Doubleday and now as a literary agent. She writes with style, empathy, wit, realism, and above all humanity. In The Forest for the Trees she identifies five ‘writer types’, all of them familiar.

The Forest for the TreesThe Ambivalent Writer is one who can’t commit to a one idea for a story from the many possibles and who does not realise that writing is 90 per cent sheer sticking power. The Natural Writer is the one for whom writing appears to come easily. Or is that the myth of not realising that hard writing makes easy reading? Lerner’s definition of the ‘natural’ is one who is always writing. She cites Thurber who never quite knew when he was or wasn’t at it, ‘Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, “Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.”‘ For ‘natural’, maybe one should read ‘persistent’.

The Wicked Child relies on ‘kiss-and-tell’: someone who exposes family relationships, friends, acquaintances (or even, like Philip Roth, a whole tribe) in a more or less disguised fashion. personal relationships. The Self-promoter will do anything for fame – there are many such writers today, but it is a shock to realise that Walt Whitman shamelessly trumpeted himself from the roof-tops and sucked up to celebrity writers of the day. Emily Dickinson on the other hand died with 2000 poems unpublished .

The Neurotic makes a great fuss about the process itself – writing has to be done with an HB pencil, or on lined paper of exactly the right width. Few of these quirks are as eccentric as Dame Edith Sitwell who needed to start the day’s work by lying in an open coffin, but every reader will recognise such stalling techniques.

The second half of the book deals with the publishing process – everything from finding an agent to the book jacket and sales conference. Authors should be aware of what editors are looking for and what they can realistically expect from a publishing house. It would seem that a wad of rejection letters followed eventually by a book without a launch party and no reviews is completely the norm. And if authors turn up to read their books in local bookshops only to find they haven’t got any copies to sell, that’s par for the course too.

Naturally every author is looking for validation, but ten per cent of all titles earn ninety per cent of all revenues. Publishers are clearly going to concentrate on those at the top of their lists. Yet the truth seems to be that even the publishers don’t know which books are going to be in that top ten per cent. If they did, they probably wouldn’t print any of the others at all.

Lerner concludes: ‘Most of the disappointment that writers experience in having a book published can be traced back to their initial expectations – what most writers don’t understand … is that landing a contract and being published do not guarantee the fulfillment of all their hopes and dreams.’

Why do we do it?

© Jane Dorner 2004

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Betsy Learner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin Putnam, revised and updated edition 2010, pp.304, ISBN: 159448483X

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The Global English Style Guide

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writing clear documentation for a global market

Many people who do not speak English as a first language struggle to understand English texts. Human translation is expensive. Machine translation (MT) frequently does not work. Global English offers a solution to these three related problems. Many good style guides exist. Why do technical writers need another guide to writing style? But unlike many other guides, The Global English Style Guide covers grammatical structures, not only particular terms.

The Global English Style Guide The book has more than 200 pages of text (plus 4 appendices) that give detailed explanations of both good practice and bad practice. John Kohl writes clearly, and he explains the reasons for the guidelines. His guidelines are based on practical work at SAS Institute, where he works as a technical author. Most technical writers know some of the guidelines already. For example, restrict the use of the passive voice; use language literally; and simplify the writing style. However, many guidelines may be new. For instance, until I read the book, I used all these sentence structures:

  • However, you can put an adverb in many locations.
  • You can, however, put an adverb in many locations.
  • You can put an adverb in many locations, however.

Now, I put an adverb at the start of a sentence, because in that location, the adverb helps to show the reader the logical connection with the previous sentence.

Both of the following sentences are grammatically correct:

  • Set up the system.
  • Set the system up.

Now, as far as possible, I always use the first structure, and keep the parts of a phrasal verb together. Keeping the parts of the verb together increases consistency, improves machine translation, and helps non-native speakers who do not know the particular verb.

A full chapter and an appendix show how to improve readability and translatability by using syntactic cues. A syntactic cue is a part of language that helps a reader to identify parts of speech and to analyse the structure of a sentence. Sometimes, syntactic cues are optional, but excluding them can cause ambiguity. Kohl gave a humorous example. The grammatically correct sentence, “Do not dip your bread or roll in your soup” has two possible meanings:

  1. Do not dip your bread or your roll in your soup.
  2. Do not dip your bread in your soup, and do not roll in your soup.

If readers are aware of the second interpretation, they know that it is incorrect. However, with technical texts, if a writer does not include optional syntactic cues, a reader’s interpretation may be incorrect.

With Global English, a writer can use all grammatical structures and all terms, unless the guidelines prohibit the grammar or the term. Additionally, the primary rule of Global English is, ‘do not make any change that will sound unnatural to native speakers of English’.

An alternative method for writing clear text is to use a controlled language. With a controlled language, a writer can use only grammar and terms that are permitted. Despite the different methods, many of the Global English guidelines agree with controlled language guidelines.

The subtitle of the book refers to writing documentation. However, most of the guidelines apply to copywriting as much as to technical writing. All writers who want to reach a global audience, to decrease translation costs, or to make their texts as clear as possible will benefit highly from this book.

Review by Mike Unwalla © 2008

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John R, Kohl, The Global English style guide: writing clear, translatable documentation for a global market. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc. 2008, ISBN 9781599946573.

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The Handbook of Good English

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guide to grammar, punctuation, usage, and style

Some writing guides are not much more than a list of grammatical rules, with illustrative examples and tips on what to avoid. Even though it uses grammatical elements as its structure, The Handbook of Good English is almost the opposite of that. Edward Johnson is an editor with a passion for language and the way it is used. What he seeks to explain is not just grammatical rules but the reasons why some forms of writing are more persuasive and elegant than others.

The Handbook of Good English And he does this in a very leisurely manner, which is what makes this book so long – and comprehensive. He starts with sentences, then works his way to parts of speech and punctuation. At best, the examples and explanations he gives are good for being so succinct – as in his discussion of the gerund:

I dislike that man’s wearing a mask and I dislike that man wearing a mask are different statements. In the first, the wearing of the mask is disliked; in the second, the man is disliked. In the first statement, wearing is a gerund – that is, a special verb form that functions as a noun.

He covers every possible combination of circumstances which can arise to create problems: how to show quotations within quotations, dashes within parentheses, foreign words, and the titles of newspapers, plays, and the parts of a book. His thoroughness is almost exhausting. There are twenty-seven pages on the comma and thirty-four on the hyphen alone.

He’s what might be called a liberal or tolerant prescriptivist, because whilst permitting occasional exceptions, he does ultimately seek to establish rules:

the functionless comma does no harm, but nevertheless, commas that have no function should be omitted, just as words that have no function should be omitted (see Rule 1-4).

He takes full account of the differences between American and UK use of English, and it is interesting to note that (contrary to what UK traditionalists imagine) changes and influences operate in both directions.

Grammar issues apart, the chapter most readers will enjoy is his last – where he gives excellent advice on writing style. This covers subtle matters such as tone, diction, pace, attitude, and construction.

But at times, his approach is not so felicitous. I found it slightly annoying that a lot of his topics started off with bad examples. There are so many reasons why writing can be clumsy and ill-formed, this leads him into lengthy discussions of all the possible corrections and alternatives, after which he is forced to say:

It must be admitted that the correct versions of these sentences are much harder on the ear or eye than the incorrect versions, and that rewriting them would be advisable.

It’s a book which will probably be of most use to those people who already have a reasonable command of basic English, but who would like to know why some common grammatical problems are wrong or unacceptable – as well as how to put them right. In this sense it can be used as both a book of instruction or reference.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Edward D. Johnson, The Handbook of Good English, New York: Washington Square Press, 1991, pp.426, ISBN: 0671707973

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The Little Brown Handbook

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encyclopaedia of writing skills + exercises and examples

Don’t be misled by the title. This book is neither little nor brown. It’s a reference guide to all aspects of academic writing that its authors say will “answer almost any question you have about writing…find out how to get ideas, punctuate quotations, search the Internet, cite sources, or write a resumé”. That’s a bold claim, but in almost one thousand densely packed pages, I think they live up to it. The Little, Brown Handbook has become a classic style guide over its many editions.

The Little, Brown HandbookFowler and Aaron start with the standard academic essay and its requirements, then cover grammar, punctuation, spelling, sentence construction, vocabulary, and research. However, these simple headings belie the richness of the material they provide. The latest edition takes full account of computers and the Internet for writing and research, advice for users of English as a second language, plus the latest (1998) MLA guidelines.

It actually starts with a chapter on critical thinking and reading, then puts its emphasis on writing as a process of development, drafting, and revising. These sections act as a thorough course in essay-writing techniques, from formulating ideas to revising, editing, and proofreading the final drafts.

It’s full of handy hints. They suggest for instance the use of two-column reading journal – left column for summaries, and an empty right column which will “beckon you to respond” with critical notes. Every point is illustrated with examples, and there are exercises at the end of each chapter [though you have to work out the answers for yourself].

This is a book that could be used for reference [“Where does the comma go?”] as a teaching aid [“Work through exercises 4 and 5”] or as a source of self-instruction [Outliners and how to use them in generating structure]. For students, there are some very useful examples of revised drafts, tips on essay introductions and conclusions, the generation and substantiation of arguments, and recognising fallacies of argument. For tutors, they make suggestions for coursework.

The section on sentence construction is also an introduction to the basics of English Language and grammar. Like many other guides of its kind, it assumes that readers need to know about ‘prepositional phrases’, ‘subordinating conjunctions’, and ‘restrictive apositives’. Every single case and difficulty is listed, to the point of exhaustive completeness. The problem is that it might not be easy for students to locate the case they require from index entries which read ‘Commas – with conjunctive adverbs and transitional expressions’.

After sections on grammatical correctness, it goes on to questions of taste, style, and conventions in language-use. This embraces choosing the appropriate word, being concise, eliminating dross, and extending one’s vocabulary. The vexed issue of spelling is explained with all its common exceptions, and the latter part of the book discusses meta-issues such as planning a research project, using the Internet to good effect, evaluating sources, the traditional skills of taking notes, and the latest MLA conventions on text citation. At the end, there are sections on writing under exam conditions, business writing (with plenty of examples) and appendices on page layout, document design, oral presentations, and writing with a computer. These latter sections will be of interest to more advanced users.

For students, there are some very useful examples of sample research papers and an examination essay – not only the complete text, but a running commentary on the right-hand page explaining points of detail and commenting on structure, format, citation, and the handling of secondary sources. They even include revised drafts and notes made in the composition of the papers. This is an excellent resource, and just about the closest you could get to live tuition in the subtleties of academic writing.

This may be a book that will appeal more to course tutors, instructors, and librarians than to the students it is written for, but for anyone concerned with the development of writing skills Fowler and Aaron cover all (and I mean all) the details. It might be an expensive investment, but if you’re teaching writing skills it’s the most comprehensive resource I’ve ever come across, and if you’re just starting your academic career, it will see you through to post-graduate studies and beyond.

© Roy Johnson 2009

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H. Ramsey Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, Little, Brown Handbook, (7th edn) New York: Longman, 11th edition 2009, pp.992, ISBN: 0205734960

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The Way We Write

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interviews with award-winning writers

There are any number of books on the theory of writing (Ron Kellogg, Mike Sharples, Naomi Baron) but we rarely hear from writers themselves about how they tackle this most personal of all expressive mediums and the writing techniques they use. Barbara Baker interviewed award-winning writers in a number of genres: writers of children’s fiction, novelists, play and screen writers, poets, and short story writers. And even though the interviews were conducted by phone, fax, or face to face, the editor is scrupulously absent, leaving the writers to talk for themselves. The most immediate and interesting thing is how unromantic most of them are about writing. They see the process of creation as a practical matter, and are much rooted in physical practicalities.

Writing techniquesRaymond Briggs for instance talks about how cartoon stories have to fit into thirty-two pages, because it has to be a multiple of eight because of the way paper is folded. It’s also interesting to note that the majority of the writers interviewed still write their first drafts by hand: “I write with a fountain pen and black ink. My fountain pens are very precious to me and I would never take them out of the house.” (Graham Swift). These might then be transferred to word-processors for editing, but there seems to still be a charm or intimacy about writing with pen on paper – a feeling I recognise, having just done that for this review.

Most of them like to be alone, and to write in their own workroom, no matter how cluttered or unprofessional it might be. However, the poet U.A.Fanthorpe doesn’t have a room, can write anywhere, and even uses the back of her hand if there’s no paper available. And people tempted by a puritanical ethic might keep in mind that writers as distinguished as Vladimir Nabokov, Marcel Proust, and Patrick White wrote in bed.

Julian Fellowes has some interesting things to say about writing for the screen – most notably how little directions are necessary:

One of the things I think is fatal is the film-school idea of writing the directions in very abrupt shorthand. It is impossible to read and puts off 99 people out of 100, and I cannot imagine why they tell students to do it!

Another feature which crops up amongst most of them is not knowing what the ending of a novel will be whilst they are writing it. Many just start with an idea, a character, or just an image – then work forwards.

And it’s amazing just how insecure even some of the most successful are. Margaret Dabble – Lady Holroyd – daughter of a novelist and wife of a famous biographer – speaks of “The insecurity of a writer’s position is extreme … With every [book] I think, ‘This is the one that will be turned down’.”

Some of the authors come across as incredibly smug: “Writing comes easily to me…I have a gift for language” but most of them are very modest – happy if they can find the time for writing and grateful for being published. And that majority also have one other thing in common – they find writing hard work; they go through several drafts before they are satisfied; and they are writing all the time.

Aspirant writers might take comfort from the fact that out of eighteen writers (and award-winners at that) only two had any formal training. Anyone who aspires to producing some published story, poem, novel, or screenplay will find interest and encouragement here.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Barbara Baker (ed), The Way We Write: Interviews with Award-Winning Writers, London: Continuum, 2007, pp.234, ISBN: 0826491227

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Towards Electronic Journals

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future directions for academic publishing

Academic publishing is in crisis. In the past, university researchers have been dependent on publishers to print and distribute their work in the form of books and scholarly journals. Now that they realise they can use the Internet, it’s time to change. Here are the arguments. Academics are under pressure to publish. If they produce articles, books, and research papers which are assessed by their peers, this helps them to promote their careers – and we may or may not be wiser for what they write. All this is done at the expense of taxpayers, who foot the bill for their salaries whilst they spend time writing. Academic publishers take their works and turn them into marketable products. And who buys these very specialised products? Well, very few people actually. Mainly research libraries – also funded by taxpayers’ money.

Towards Electronic JournalsThere’s an interesting conjunction here. Academic authors receive very little in the way of royalties from these sales. A five percent payment on sales is normal for a book. Zero percent is equally normal for a journal; and there have recently been tales of writers paying publishers to produce their work.

D’you think that’s bad? There’s worse to come. At the moment, because the UK academic ratings are taken at fixed intervals, some publishers have recently been making it known that a payment from authors would help, just to move their work up the production schedule, in time for the next assessment.

The authors have actually been paid already in terms of time off from a salaried post to produce the works [the system of termly and yearly ‘sabbaticals’ – that is, fully paid leave]. They will be rewarded by the salary increases (and more time off) which come with promotion. But at the very time when cuts in public expenditure mean that libraries are no longer able to subscribe to expensive journals and books which only a few people read – along comes the World Wide Web.

This was actually created (and here’s a further irony) so that academic researchers could share their findings across the Internet – doing so quickly and free from any commercial restrictions. If you write a paper on rocket science, you can put the results directly onto a web site and announce the fact to special interest groups. That way, you can invite feedback, critical comment, and peer review – and receive it fairly quickly, instead of having to wait up to two years as you would if the paper was put into the dinosaur production methods of commercial publishers.

Everyone loses as a result of this sequence of events: scientists are paying more in their time to obtain needed articles, libraries are paying higher subscription fees while providing less information, and because of this, their funders are concerned and sceptical about increased costs.

Publishers, on the other hand, are severely criticized, and they continue to lose subscribers, prestige, and the potential advertising revenue that accompanies higher circulation. In other words, the increased prices have resulted in a lose, lose, lose, lose situation for publishers, scientists, libraries, and their funders.

Scholarly journals take a long time to produce; they are very expensive; and very few people read them. Why bother then, when the same results can be made available fast, free of charge, and to a much wider audience? These are some of the fundamental issues underpinning this book. It’s an investigation into basic questions related to publishing in this form. How much does it cost? What are the trends in scholarly article authorship and readership? What are the overall implications of electronic journals to publishers, libraries, scientists, and their funders?

The argument on costs is overwhelming. Electronic publishing saves on printing costs, re-printing costs, storage costs, archiving, and inter-library loan costs. And all the other arguments return again and again to the obvious advantages of electronic publication. Yet Carol Tenopir and Donald King are no revolutionaries – in fact they are not even very radical.

They point out that readers both inside and outside universities will continue to demand materials in printed form. Which is true. It’s amazing how many people continue to print out documents – for the sake of convenience, and habit. And throughout the entire study they assume that the production of journals will be organised and conducted by commercial publishers, making charges for access and subscriptions. This might be true – for a while.

The information they assemble in answer to their own questions seems therefore to be provided as answers to the basic questions raised by this interesting cultural phenomenon.

It’s a study which is aimed at researchers, librarians, publishers, and anyone interested in electronic publication, and they go out of their way to provide hard evidence for decision-makers.

They offer a realistic examination of what scientists, publishers, and librarians can expect from scholarly journals, based on hard quantitative evidence. This provides revealing information with which to address such searching questions as:

  • Are printed journals worth saving?
  • What are the consequences of escalating journal prices?
  • Will electronic journals replace print journals?
  • What is the current readership of scientific journals – in both print and electronic form?
  • What are the costs of publishing in print and electronic form?

They go into the finest details of pricing, cost-per-reader, and variations of delivery – but it is all posited on the notion that ‘journals’ are most naturally available in printed form. The details even include the history of scholarly journals; subsidies; and readership behaviour – including even the number of hours required to keep abreast of a subject.

If you are interested in one of the lesser-known but burgeoning forms of electronic publishing – then you should find this a rich source of hard facts for the debate. And if it’s a subject close to your academic heart, let me strongly urge you to read it in conjunction with Anne Okerson’s Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads in which the arguments for electronic publication and self-archiving were first made available in printed form.

© Roy Johnson 2001

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Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King, Towards Electronic Journals: Realities for Scientists, Librarians, and Publishers, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association, 2000, pp.488, ISBN 0871115077

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Waterhouse on Newspaper Style

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writing skills via amusing critique of tabloid journalism

Waterhouse on Newspaper Style has a complex history. It was originally written in 1979 as a series of style notes for journalists on the Daily Mirror, and it has gone in and out of print ever since – whilst simultaneously establishing a reputation as a classic of clear guidance and an analysis of tabloid journalism. Keith Waterhouse is one of the old Fleet Street school who actually care about clarity, accuracy, and good prose style.

Waterhouse on Newspaper Style Writing from the point of view of a working journalist, he inspects the linguistic practice of the press and reveals its weaknesses in a series of witty mini-essays. He adopts the A-to-Z format – from Adjectives through Metaphor to the Weather – looking at usage and abusage in a way which is both instructive and very amusing.

It’s easy to score points off the tabloid fixation with headlines which combine rhyme, alliteration, cliché, and weak puns [RAMBO BOY ON RAMPAGE]. However, in the course of dissecting these literary weaknesses, Waterhouse forces us to think about the everyday misuse of language in a way which is instructive beyond the pages our daily newspapers.

For instance, in terms of the discourse of the medium, he points out that popular journalism employs an artificial language which nobody actually speaks – as in “the dollar takes a pounding”.

He describes this approach as being like “ransom notes which are made up of lettering cut out of various publications”. And all through this amusing tour of catchwords, journalese, officialese, and tautology he has perceptive advice to offer on the most basic elements of good writing – such as accuracy and restraint in the use of the comma, and alertness to the cliché, the vogue word, and the tired metaphor.

Another of his observations which struck me as usefully perceptive was the reason he gives for distrusting those who use too much jargon:

to use outsiders’ jargon is to take their own evaluation of themselves on trust – or anyway to give the impression of doing so. This is one good reason why journalists should never resort to the jargon of the field they cover.

Waterhouse illuminates the conventions of good and bad writing without once resorting to the polysyllabic terms of conventional grammar. There are no ‘objects of a preposition’ or ‘possessive pronouns’ here. Everything is done via plain prose and good examples. He comes out on the side of the specific, the concrete, and the direct expression. We should write ‘red’, not ‘brightly coloured’, ‘rain’ not ‘bad weather’, and ‘began’ not ‘commenced’.

It’s a joy to read, it’s instructive, and you’ll search your own prose more rigorously to avoid the solecisms he discusses. But the book’s idiosyncratic career still seems to be in progress. My edition is a recent Penguin paperback, yet when I checked the Net, it didn’t appear to be in print. Keep looking. It’s well worth the effort.

© Roy Johnson 2000

Waterhouse on Newspaper Style   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Waterhouse on Newspaper Style   Buy the book at Amazon US

Keith Waterhouse, Waterhouse on Newspaper Style London: Penguin, 1993, pp.250, ISBN: 0140118195

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