The Five Virtues of a Good Writer

This week's article summary is The Five Virtues of a Good Writer, and it is a follow-up to last week's summary in which I reminisced about my high school years learning—or more accurately not learning—how to write well.

This article identifies five components of good writing. For me, these components are more applicable to us as adults than our students, as the most important goals we should have for our elementary school students are to foster their enthusiasm and confidence as writers. Yes, we begin to introduce these components to our students, particularly in our upper elementary grades, yet true understanding and application of them doesn’t begin to coalesce until our students are in middle, high school, or even later.

Hence, as all of us at Trinity have writing responsibilities from progress reports to written communication to students, colleagues, and parents, keeping these components at the forefront of the writing process can be very helpful.

As I read the article, what impacted me the most was the need for a clear purpose before writing. I wrote progress reports for over 30 years, and I often struggled writing about the students who fell within the meaty part of the bell curve. The all-star performers and chronic strugglers were easy for me to write about because I knew where they shined or needed to improve. It was the middle kids whose description (strengths, challenges, needs/next steps) eluded me. But as the summary below points out, I didn’t have a clear purpose of what I wanted to write about them because I hadn’t thought carefully and deeply enough about them before I started to write about them. Instead, I would just begin writing and hoped the right words would follow. Those progress reports were often uninspired and ineffective because they didn’t capture the uniqueness of the child.

Stephen King is his book On Writing, advises to “write with the door closed (for you), then rewrite with the door open (for others).” Once you have your purpose, writing–at least the rough draft—becomes much easier.

The other four components of writing (although I also like the article’s sixth one: rhythm) come into play during the editing and revising processes. It’s through revision that our ideas are reorganized and more clearly expressed so others can easily follow and understand.

Like any skill—and writing ultimately is a skill—writing requires constant practice. Even as we write simple emails to colleagues, we should keep these five components in mind and strive to further hone our writing.

Joe

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The great journalist and author Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) offered the following excellent advice to writers:

“The reader who seeks to write well and think well should aim first at the essential qualities—coherence, clarity, precision, simplicity, and brevity. Euphony (pleasant to the ears) and rhythm are of course also desirable, but they are like the final rubbing on a fine piece of furniture—finishing touches justified only if the piece has been soundly made. The apprentice writer should try to acquire these Five Virtues by vigilant abstention from the Five Vices of Incoherence, Obscurity, Vagueness, Pedantry, and Circumlocution.”

Here are a few of my own thoughts on these writing virtues and corresponding vices.

Coherence (as opposed to Incoherence) is the quality of forming a unified, integrated whole. For a writing piece to have coherence, it must have a clear purpose, and every constituent part of it must contribute toward that purpose. Long digressions and non sequiturs can make a piece incoherent.

Clarity (as opposed to Obscurity) in writing is about being easily understood by the reader. A writer who wants to be understood must think in terms, not only of expression (sharing one’s thoughts) but exposition (sharing ideas intelligibly). Often attaining greater clarity in exposition goes hand-in-hand with attaining greater clarity in your own understanding of the topic. For a piece to be clear, it must flow well: both narratively and logically. Each passage must advance the story and/or argument of the piece in a way that naturally follows what came before it. A piece that is disjointed and “jumps around” too much will confuse the reader. Clear writing must also be complete. It must not omit any points that are necessary for the reader to understand what you’re saying. Missing context will obscure your message. Unfamiliar, un-introduced jargon will also make your presentation opaque to the reader. Remember that the reader does not share all your knowledge. Be wary of presuming that a necessary connection will “go without saying.”

Precision (as opposed to Vagueness) in writing is about being exact and specific in conveying your meaning. Attaining precision is often a matter of “playing around” with a sentence to find just the right wording and phrasing to accurately get your meaning across.

Simplicity (as opposed to Pedantry) in writing is about limiting your exposition only to the essential. Writers with extensive knowledge of their subject are often tempted to over-share arcane details that would overload the reader. Don’t try to cram a comprehensive education of your subject into one piece. Shoot for the realistic aim of providing your reader an important lesson that is simple enough to be fully digested in one sitting.

Brevity (as opposed to Circumlocution) in writing is about getting your meaning across in as few words as necessary. (But no fewer. Brevity in excess can result in vagueness and obscurity.) Often one’s first stab at a sentence will be needlessly wordy and thus unwieldy to the reader. See what you can do to cut, compress, and recombine your wording to make your sentence more concise and elegant. Prune any sentences that don’t “carry their weight”: that don’t contribute enough value to your presentation to justify the additional work they demand from the reader. Sometimes this can mean cutting whole sections. You have to be willing to “kill your darlings” as William Faulkner put it.