Chapter 1 Essentials for Clear and Concise Writing
Guideline 1: Use Proper Grammar
Guideline 2: Ensure Cohesion and Coherence
My favorite animal is the domestic cat. Cats were domesticated almost 10,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is a name that literally means “the land between two rivers,” taken from Greek. The Greek Language is one of the oldest written languages, and its alphabet forms the basis of many other writing systems, including Latin. Latin…
In this paragraph, the author demonstrates cohesion by starting each sentence with the idea presented in the preceding sentence. In general, this is a good strategy as readers will understand writing better when sentences lead with familiar information and conclude with unfamiliar information. Similarly, readers expect context to come first in a sentence, followed by the message at the end of the sentence. Because the end of a sentence is the “stress position,” readers will be more likely to retain the information found there. Consider the following paragraph:
Farmers try to provide optimal growing conditions for crops by using soil additives to adjust soil pH. Garden lime, or agricultural limestone, is made from pulverized chalk, and can be used to raise the pH of the soil. Clay soil, which is naturally acidic, often requires addition of agricultural lime.
Because the second and third sentences put new information first, the reader will need to backtrack. By moving some of the information around, the paragraph will gain more cohesion and be more understandable to the reader:
Farmers try to provide optimal growing conditions for crops by using soil additives to adjust soil pH. One way to raise the pH of the soil is an additive made from pulverized chalk called garden lime or agricultural limestone. Agricultural limestone is often added to naturally acidic soils, such as clay.
However, as shown in the first example, a lack of coherence across sentences disorients the reader. To ensure coherence, make the first and last sentences of a paragraph match—like the engine and caboose on a train. Readers expect thoughts to be expressed in paragraph units with a single paragraph corresponding to a single topic. Organizing topics into paragraphs with matching introductory and conclusion sentences also cues readers to what information is about to be presented. The first sentence should introduce the topic and the last sentence should emphasize the takeaway while setting up the start of the next paragraph. All the sentences in between the engine and caboose should fill in the topic and lead toward the takeaway.
Guideline 3: Be Concise
Readers do not passively read; they interpret information as it is presented to them. The role of the communicator is to make it easy for the reader to interpret that information. The best way to do this is to match reader expectations for basic sentence components: subjects and actions.
The first piece of information a reader looks for in a sentence is the subject – who is the sentence about? To make this information easy to find, structure your sentences with the “main character” as the grammatical subject. Consider this sentence:
The movement in the liquid medium of the bacteria was accomplished by microflagella
The grammatical subject in this sentence is “movement in the liquid medium,” but that likely is not the best “main character.” Consider this revised sentence:
The bacteria move themselves in the liquid medium with microflagella.
Here, there is a clear and concise grammatical subject, the bacteria, and the sentence is shorter and easier to understand. Similarly, keep the subjects of your sentences simple. It may be tempting to define a complex, abstract subject and describe what it does in a single sentence, but this often results in long, complicated sentences. For example, the sentence below can be split into two sentences for better clarity and concision:
Before: The sequences that had passed our filtering, trimming, and alignment with ClustalX were scanned for conserved elements across mammals.
After: The sequences were trimmed, filtered, and aligned with ClustalX. The resulting alignments were scanned for conserved elements across mammals.
The second piece of information a reader looks for in a sentence is the action – what does the subject do? To make this information easy to find, structure your sentences with an action as the sentence’s verb. Non-verbs that reflect action, called nominalizations, inhibit a reader from understanding what the subject is doing. Consider the following sentences:
Poor: The ABC database has been subject to different improvements, modifications, and extensions in structure and content over the years.
Better: The ABC database has been improved, modified, and extended in both structure and content over the years.
Best: The curators have improved the structure and content of the ABC database.
The best version of the sentence has both an active subject and an action-filled verb.
Once a sentence has a clear subject and action, make it easy for a reader to connect those two pieces of information by keeping subjects near their verbs. Complex subjects or non-essential clauses often add too many words between a subject and the action, making it harder to understand who the sentence is about and what they are doing. The sentences below demonstrate the value of having simple subjects (in blue) and verbs (in red) that are near each other.2
Before: Farmers that understand the difference between the soil requirements of plants when they are seedlings and their requirements when they are mature are high in demand.
After: Farmers are high in demand if they can understand the difference between the soil requirements of plants when they are seedlings and their requirements when they are mature.
In addition to the above structural components, concision is achieved by using simple words and omitting needless words. Often, simple words convey the same meaning as longer, more complex words while being easier to read and understand.Table 2.1 provides some examples of complex words and phrases and their simpler counterparts. Public health practitioners and epidemiologists also use many words unfamiliar to the public. These terms may also convey different ideas and feelings to different audiences (e.g., surveillance). Public health communicators may need to “translate” these terms into more familiar words. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Everyday Words for Public Health Communication Tool and the University of Michigan’s Plain Language Medical Dictionary may be helpful for translating industry-specific words (see Additional Resources).
Needless words include common or cliché phrases and unnecessary adverbs or adjectives. These words and phrases typically add excess length or grammatical structure without contributing meaningful content. Table 2.2 provides some examples of needless words and phrases.
Many of the concepts highlighted in the first 3 guidelines are part of “plain language,” a framework for maximizing readability and audience understanding. For a more complete summary of plain language guidance, see the CDC’s Laboratory Communications Toolkit in the Additional Resources section.
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Note that this example demonstrates two important concepts. Clarity is achieved by (1) restructuring the sentence so that the subject and verb are close to each other and (2) simplifying the subject.↩︎