What is good music? What is good art? What is good writing? Such questions unleash many opinions. The branch of traditional philosophy called Aesthetics is devoted to answering such questions with thoughtful discipline. But let’s apply the approach of a philosophical school or tradition that emerged in America late in the nineteenth century. It is called Pragmatism, and it endeavors to make philosophy more practical by setting aside the notion that thought serves to somehow represent or reflect reality. Instead, Pragmatism embraces both thought and words as instruments to be used for solving problems, making predictions, and determining courses of action.
What, then, is good writing?
From the perspective of Pragmatism, the answer goes something like this: Good writing is an instrument for solving problems, making predictions, and determining courses of action. This prompts a question: What does this instrument called good writing look like?
Good writing is clear writing
Clarity requires fluency in the language in which you are writing. This means understanding and appreciating the vocabulary of the language in its range of meaning, connotation, and nuance. It means being practiced and skilled in the syntax of the language and in its grammar. We will discuss these and other basics shortly, but, expressed in a simple sentence: Clarity requires literacy.
Literacy is the table stakes of clarity. This means that literacy is necessary to achieving clarity in writing, but it is not sufficient to creating this result—much as knowing the rules of baseball is necessary but hardly sufficient to playing baseball, especially if your goal is to win the game.
Beyond competence and fluency in the language, clarity requires the writer to accomplish three things:
State the subject of the writing. In the case of an essay written for a philosophy class, the subject is often a question that is to be answered or a problem that is to be solved.
Supply the key content the subject demands. Again, for most philosophical writing, this means stating the answer to the question or the solution to the problem.
Supply the relevant data and analysis to support the key content. If you have answered a question or solved a problem, supply the data and the reasons that support your answer or your solution. As a rule, this constitutes the body, the major portion, of a clearly written paper.
Not all writing needs to be or even should be structured strictly in this way. But unless you have a good reason to depart from this basic blueprint, it is hard to go wrong if you accept this as the default structure of a clearly written paper. Structure implies disciplined thought, and disciplined thought is both a prerequisite for and evidence of clarity in expression. Even if you do depart from these three pillars, beginning with a paragraph that states what you intend to accomplish in the paper and ending with a paragraph that clearly states your conclusion and reviews your argument go a long way toward creating clarity of understanding.
Clarity creates satisfaction in a reader’s mind, which greatly inclines that reader to judge the writing as “good.” The opposite of clarity—which ranges from obscurity to chaos —creates dissatisfaction, which, naturally, will incline the reader to judge the work as “bad.”
Good writing is no more complex than it needs to be
Good writing enlightens readers concerning its subject. Bad writing obscures its subject, leaving readers in darkness greater than what prevailed before they read the writing.
We don’t always write about simple subjects. This is especially true in writing about many of the topics encountered in the study of philosophy. An essay that dumbs down its subject, simplifying it to the point of distortion, misstatement, and omission, is bad writing. But writing that creates its own obscurity by unnecessarily complicating already challenging material is likewise bad writing.
So, good writing is as simple as it can be without compromising any necessary complexity inherent in the subject. If you are asked to write a description of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, and you write a paper boiling down his philosophy to atheism, you are clearly oversimplifying the subject. While Sartre was a so-called existential atheist and his philosophy certainly included atheism, his version of existential thought encompassed far more.
As a virtue of good writing, simplicity consists of trying to identify and express the essence of concepts and putting the emphasis on these. It also requires focusing on discussion relevant to your subject, your argument, your solution to a problem, or your answer to a question while avoiding superfluous material, long detours, and irrelevant background information. Finally, simplicity is also achieved through careful writing:
Find the right word and use it. Do not use two, three, or more words if there is one word that expresses your point completely.
Use correct syntax and grammar. (We will have more to say on this shortly.) Complex sentences are often necessary to express complex, sophisticated, and nuanced thought, but avoid excessively complicated and overly long sentences. When a sentence grows substantially in length, even if it is grammatically and syntactically correct, consider breaking it into two or more sentences. How do you know a sentence is too long? Read it as if somebody else wrote it and you are reading it for the first time. Is it easy to follow? Do you have to reread it several times to understand it? If your answer to the first question is no and your answer to the second is yes, break the sentence up.
Let nouns and verbs do your heavy lifting. Be stingy with adjectives and adverbs. Wherever possible, use the active voice.
This last piece of advice merits some discussion.
Writing a sentence in the “active voice” puts the subject at the beginning of the sentence and makes clear that the subject performs the action the verb expresses. “Kant wrote Critique of Pure Reason” is a sentence in the active voice. The subject, Kant, performed the action of writing the object, Critique of Pure Reason. It is also possible to write the sentence in the passive voice, a sentence construction that makes the object the subject of the sentence: “Critique of Pure Reason was written by Kant.” Both sentences are grammatically and syntactically correct, but the active voice is usually preferable because it is simpler (and therefore easier to understand) and almost always more natural. The doer of the action is given logical precedence over the object of the action: subject (doer), verb (what is done), object (that to which something is done). This order is both simpler and more lifelike. In a word, it is active. Moreover, it usually puts the emphasis on a person, and human readers are naturally more interested in human beings than in things.
To use the passive voice is not to commit a grammatical error, but its use can make it difficult for the reader to determine who is taking the action of the verb. Additionally, the passive voice usually requires more words. In the two Kant examples, for instance, the active voice requires six words; the passive voice version requires eight. Moreover, the construction of a sentence in the passive voice is more complicated and can be awkward.
To complexity and awkwardness, we can add two more sins of the passive voice.
The passive voice sometimes suppresses useful information. Compare “I wrote a recent study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason” with “A study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was recently written.” Who wrote it? We don’t know. If we add the information and retain the passive voice, it comes out like this: “A study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was recently written by me.” The grammar is fine, but the sentence sounds as if it had been written by a visitor from another planet.
But the worst offense of all is that the passive voice makes for boring writing. It takes the spotlight off the person—the actor, the doer—and puts it on the object. In the case of the Kant example, the object is a book, but could just as easily be a block of wood. Neither is more interesting than a person.
No wonder, then, that teachers have been trying to pound the passive voice out of their students for a long time. And yet even the passive voice, pompous and dreary as it can be, has its proper uses. Sometimes a writer purposefully wants to reduce the emphasis or importance of the subject in the sentence. For instance, the professor may prefer to post the warning that follows in the passive voice rather than the active voice to put the emphasis on the object (“Students failing to complete …”) instead of on the subject (the professor, “I”). In fact, by using the passive voice, the professor removes himself or herself from the sentence entirely: Passive voice: “Students failing to complete their 1000-word Kant assignment on time will be required to write 2000 words on Sartre next week.” Active voice: “I will require students who fail to complete their 1000-word Kant assignment on time to write 2000 words on Sartre next week.” The point of this warning is not that the professor has the power to penalize students (implied by the active voice), but that the students have responsibility to do their assigned homework (conveyed by the passive voice).
Good writing is economical
Related to simplicity is economy of expression. Strive to make every word count. Fight the temptation to string together two or three or more synonyms or near-synonyms. In a first draft, it is usually a good idea to let the words flow as they will. But when you return to the essay to create a second draft, cut away the excess. “He struggled to overcome his fear, his trepidation, his dread, his terror, his anxiety” should become in a second draft, “He struggled to overcome his fear” unless your point is that this man was more than simply afraid, in which case you may decide to settle on “He struggled to overcome his terror.”
On Thursday, November 19, 1863, Edward Everett, now largely forgotten but famed at the time as America’s foremost orator, delivered a two-hour, 13,607-word speech called “The Battles of Gettysburg.” It was the featured speech accompanying the dedication of the new military cemetery on the site of the momentous Civil War battle. After Everett concluded, Abraham Lincoln delivered his own untitled Gettysburg Address, which, at 271 words, clocked in at just under two minutes. Which speech is remembered today?
Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature” runs Everett’s first sentence. You may be among the many of us able to recite Lincoln’s first sentence from memory: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The point of Everett’s first 52 words? He is afraid he might not be eloquent enough for the commemorative job assigned to him. The point of Lincoln’s 19 words? Nothing less than what the United States—the Union—stands for. Both Everett and Lincoln speak the language of eminently literate men, but by comparison with what Lincoln accomplished in 19 words, Everett comes off as having squandered his 52. (And his audience could look forward to sitting through 13,555 more!)
Economy of expression does not skimp. It does not neglect writing about what is worth writing about. But it avoids what professional writers and editors call “overwriting.” Symptoms of overwriting include:
Padding. Some writers (especially those who are paid by the word) pad their work with extra words that deliver nothing meaningful. For instance, we often encounter the phrase close proximity. It sounds right because it’s so familiar. The problem is that proximity means closeness. No matter how eager you were to pad your essay, you wouldn’t write “close closeness.” Yet that is precisely what close proximity means. Consider:
actual experience = experience
advance planning = planning
armed gunman = gunman
twelve midnight = midnight
twelve noon = noon
autobiography of my life = autobiography
basic fundamentals = fundamentals (or basics)
cease and desist = cease
cold temperature = cold
consensus of opinion = consensus
each and every = each
empty space = space
end result = result
estimated roughly at = estimated at
filled to capacity = filled
free gift = gift
frozen ice = ice
general public = public
join together = join
natural instinct = instinct
null and void = void
pair of twins = twins
past experience = experience
prerecorded = recorded
regular routine = routine
tiny speck = speck
suddenly exploded = exploded
surrounded on all sides = surrounded
unexpected surprise = surprise
Finding padding in an essay is like encountering oatmeal in a hamburger. You paid for meat, and, finding yourself eating oatmeal, you feel cheated. Such is the reader’s feeling. Discerning readers—and this includes professors of philosophy —see in padded writing a deficiency of disciplined thought, and they feel cheated.
Pretentiousness. A specialized form of padding is the use of pretentious words in place of simpler, more direct words. A common example is the use of utilize in place of use. This is not incorrect, but it is pompous and officious. Who wants to spend valuable time reading the words of a pompous and officious writer? To come across as honest and earnest, use words that sound honest and earnest. Consider the following pretentious words and their honest and earnest equivalents:
ascertain = find out
optimal = best
commence = begin
purchase = buy
deceased = dead
reside = live
endeavor = try
terminate = end
finalize = finish, or complete
ergo = therefore
plethora = too much
Foreign words and phrases are often pretentious and best avoided when a
perfectly good English equivalent is available. For instance:
oeuvre = body of (artistic, literary, philosophical) work
corpus = body of (artistic, literary, philosophical) work
coiffure = hairdo
haute couture = high fashion
milieu = environment or setting
sans = without
faux pas = blunder
soi-disant = self-proclaimed, self-styled, or so-called
