Lessons in Clarity and Grace (by Joseph M Williams)

1. Understanding style: Remember your readers probably know less than you do about what you
are asking them to read, and you must be clearer than you think you need to be
2. Correctness: Write not as the grammarians say you must write, but as writers you admire actually
write
3. Clarity in actions and characters: Put your important characters in subjects, then join these
subjects to verbs that name their specific actions
4. Cohesion and Coherence: Begin series of sentences in a unified passage in a consistent way, with
words that your readers will think constitute a reasonably unified set of ideas. Do not begin
sentences randomly
5. Point of view: Writers of the highest skill construct passages that focus attention on the characters
they want readers to remember and divert attention from those they want them to overlook
without their readers being aware of it
6. Emphasis: End your sentences on your rhetorically most salient, most powerful words
7. Conclusion: Cut, cut again, then cut once more
8. Shape: Preserve the connections between major grammatical parts: avoid long subjects, avoid
interrupting the connections between subject verb or verb-object. Keep introductory clauses and
phrases short, keep subjects short, create coordinate structures after those short subjects, avoid
tacking multiple clauses or phrases on
9. Elegance: Create balance and parallel phrases ad clauses after the subject; in those phrases and
clauses, echo one another’s sounds, structures, and ideas