Consulting Journal: Writing - Brevity or clarity

Writing: Brevity or clarity

by David Blakey

Do you sacrifice clarity if you aim for brevity?

[Monday 24 May 2004]

I wrote previously, in Unneeded prepositions, that many sentences could be shortened and made crisper by removing unnecessary prepositions. I used the following as an example.

The North Wind and the Sun were arguing with each other about which of them was the stronger, when a traveller came along, wrapped up in a warm cloak. They agreed that whichever of them could make the traveller take off his cloak would be the stronger of the two. The North Wind blew at the traveller, but the traveller wrapped his cloak more tightly around himself. Then the Sun shone down on the traveller, who took off the cloak. So the North Wind agreed that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

Let's take only one sentence from that paragraph

The North Wind blew at the traveller, but the traveller wrapped his cloak more tightly around himself.

I removed prepositions, unneeded conjunctions and articles and verb formations.

The North Wind blew, but the traveller wrapped his cloak tighter.

Someone has suggested to me that I could have improved that sentence by changing it to

The North Wind blew at the traveller, but he wrapped his cloak tighter.

In this way, I could have kept the traveller as the object of the verb blew. This is true. The disadvantage is that, to avoid repeating the traveller in the next clause, I would have to use he or who.

The problem with using he is that it can be unclear whether the he is the North Wind or the traveller.

The problem with using who is that I would have to remove the but. The sentence does not have the same strength, because it is not completely clear that the traveller wrapping his cloak more tightly is in spite of the North Wind blowing.

I admit that in my version I leave out the fact that the North Wind blew at the traveller, but I am happy that this is implied. The North Wind, in the context of the paragraph, would blow at the traveller to blow the cloak off.

You may prefer the other version. To you, the fact that the North Wind blew at the traveller may be important. This leads to the conclusion that we should consider as many alternatives as we can when we edit a report and then choose the one that works best to make our point to our reader. It is tempting, when editing, to choose the first alternative that comes to mind. We may look at a sentence and think I wonder if such-and-such would work better here when we should think What are the possible alternatives here?.

There is often a parallel between a consultant's report and this editing process. In the report, we may present a number of options and then recommend the one that will work best. We would be unlikely to recommend a single option without demonstrating that we had considered as many alternatives as we could.

Do not replace clarity with brevity. My original article was meant to show that you can create shorter, crisper writing by removing unnecessary prepositions. It was not meant to order you to remove all prepositions. If The North Wind blew at the traveller works better, then leave it alone.

Some final points.

First, one of the most important skills in writing is changing the pace. There will be parts of your reports where you want your reader to slow down and to consider carefully what you have written. Through skilful editing, you can change the pace throughout the report to achieve this effect. In some places, you can remove unneeded prepositions and quicken the pace; in others, you can add prepositions and subordinate clauses and slow the pace.

Second, any report written entirely at a single pace, whether it is slow or fast, will be boring to read. Changing the pace will engage - and keep - your reader's interest.

Finally, you know that these editing skills are used by novelists, journalists and columnists. Therefore, you may feel that they are not so useful to consultants. But try them and see.

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