Slow down your writing
Sentences that are clear in our heads may be less clear when they come out of our mouths. When we talk, we get feedback from our audience or conversational partners. We observe facial expressions and body language. People may ask for clarification when something is not clear or they may correct us when we misspeak. Understanding is never perfect, but it’s doable in many face-to-face instances. On the page or the screen, it’s a different story.
I did a double-take when a fiftyish friend posted that she was marrying her “16-year-old boyfriend.” I figured out from the photo that it was her long-time boyfriend, not a minor, and I did a quick mental adjustment. Her attempt at specificity created a misunderstanding, but I just offered my congratulations without editorial commentary.
An announcement of a new hire at my university read, “She was hired to fill a position that was left vacant when her successor left the university at the end of July.” Something seemed wrong. It was only on rereading the announcement that I realized that “successor” should have been “predecessor.”
I was trying to schedule a meeting and one invitee sent his regrets. The time wouldn’t work, he explained. He already had plans to have coffee “with a friend and former colleague.” I assumed it was just the two of them, but I wasn’t sure.
On a discussion board in the early days of the COVID pandemic, someone posted a question about cleaning protocols, phrasing it this way: “Should we use students to clean the classrooms?” I almost posted a reply that, “No, we should use alcohol wipes,” but everyone was too nervous for jokes, so I bit my tongue.
Posts and emails are typically ephemeral, but we also fumble when we write for posterity. If we are lucky, beta readers or editors will gently point out confusing phrases. Here are a couple of examples of potential confusion from The Copy Editor’s Handbook. I like to think that they are real manuscript examples that got corrected.
This novel is a haunting tale of deception, sexual domination, and betrayal by one of South America’s most important writers.
The Century Building has been reincarnated after years of disuse as a beautiful bookstore.
The by– and as-phrases can be connected in more than one way to other parts of the sentence. For a writer not attempting humor, this sort of ambiguity is dangerous. Many readers will find such sentences clumsy even if they are not confusing.
And, recently, I wrote this sentence, citing a book I found interesting:
In Not Exactly: In Praise of Vagueness, the computer scientist Kees van Deemter shows how many of the concepts that we think are quite precise, scientific, and “crisp” (as he calls them) are actually rather vague.
Rereading it aloud, I stumbled over the phrase “how many.” Was I referring to a number? I changed “how” to “that.”
If you write something confusing once, your reader may be momentarily distracted. If you do it a lot, they will lose confidence in your writing. For me, the lesson of such examples as these is to take a break after you draft something. Put it aside for a few minutes or a few days (or months), read it aloud as a stranger would, and revise anything that seems confusing, clumsy, or potentially ambiguous.
Take your time.
Featured image by Brett Jordan via Unsplash.