Ch 5 excerpt...

 

PART II – The Reader Expectation approach

Ch 5

Clarity is agency in action

 

The structure of every sentence is a lesson in logic – J. S. Mill

 

5.1 Action & Agency

Readers look for actions in verbs. They also look for characters in subjects. When your subject is not a person but an abstract noun, keep it in the topic position so your reader can easily find it. Topic position? This is where the subject should be in a sentence. Up front. Subjects sometimes have subordinate or related topics in a single sentence. But whether they do or don’t, don’t leave the topic position pseudo-filled with something else, forcing the reader to look for the subject! When agency is absent, it takes effort to determine identity and responsibility, and that wastes reader energy! The agent is the actor, the one who carries out an action. We need to know this to get the whole story. And if we’re not told? We have to keep looking. A strong and clear style begins by presenting the subject of the verb as the main character of the story. Take an example that needs work….

     1.The intention of the Committee is to have the records audited.

To fix this, we

1. bring the subject up to the front of the sentence

2. change the nominalization ‘intention’ into the active verb ‘intend’; and then

3. reverse their positions; and we get:

 

     1.1 The Committee intends to audit the records.

Has the meaning changed? No. Is the sentence stronger and clearer? Yes.

Let’s try another:

2. Governmental intervention in fast changing technologies has led to the distortion of market evolution and interference in new product development.

How do we make the subject clear? This is a single sentence with 5 nominalizations (converted verbs) and 1 adjective (converted noun) that just slows down the action; so, we reverse the effect. Folk like to do this because nominalizations sound technical, but they aren’t! You do not create a technical term just by changing a verb into a noun!

2.1 When a Government intervenes in fast changing technologies, it distorts how markets evolve and interferes with their ability to develop new products.

Now we have a clearly defined subject and very clear actions.

 

Subjects, verbs, agency, character, action – together, they constitute meaning in sequence. Never get in between. This is a critical observation in the work of Reader Expectation! To do that is to use a comma wrongly. When you place material between a subject and a verb you create an interruption! You may like the ‘sound’ of your ‘style’, but you are wasting your reader’s time and energy. And hurting your own effectiveness. To write in this way is to disrupt your flow of meaning. And to do so as a matter of ‘style’ is to be no more than a traditional, somewhat slavish follower of ABC styles.³ (see my comments about Archaic British Colonialisms…) I’m being kind. If I wanted to be ‘blunt’, I’d say it’s just willful ignorance. If some folk who teach English have yet to get these things right, it is because they have never given serious thought to these issues! Or were never trained to.

 

     British literary style derives from the culture of the British aristocracy! Its circular style was a treat for the upper classes, as they played their little word games. The classics are full of these, in between some beautifully descriptive prose.⁴ But it was rather tortuous to the lower classes, who couldn’t figure out what was being said, much less read what was being written! Priests in those days even kept the ‘Word of God’ literally under lock and key.⁵ At a given time in worship they would unlock the Bible – the Word of God, and then proceed to educate the uneducated, who could not read, by reading to them, always underscoring the privilege these poor folk were being given!

   

 Once we have a sense of subject placing, understanding how the topic position functions is easily done. It’s a structural notion i.e., this is where the subject should go – in the topic position, at the front of the sentence. If you have to get through eight to ten words before you get to the subject, that’s not efficient communication. The reader is waiting for you, the writer, to get to the subject! So simply start with it. Make this part of your style.

     The 2^nd part of a strong and clear style is to manage stress and emphasis effectively. When you get to the end of a sentence, think of the most important piece of information in this sentence that you want to emphasize. And put that at the end of your sentence. Your reader will get where you’re coming from.  And they will understand the takeaway. This is the beauty of Reader Expectation. It’s not a matter of grammar and rules. But it does have a somewhat high-tech Information Technology approach to sequence, structure and high-speed connectivity that gives clarity. It just needs the discipline of getting used to simple patterns of structural placement. With consistent effort, you can get it down fast!

So, in examining clarity we look for the following:

a. whether the topic position holds a clearly identified subject;

b. if agency or character are clearly presented

c. that the action the subject is related to is linked to the subject 

d. does the reader have to search for the subject? If so, why?

e. does the reader have to go verb-hunting to discover pertinent action?

 

We will analyze several sentences of varying length to see if their clarity is weak, strong, or missing. In the process, we will discover why.    

 

3.The government’s lack of engagement and consultation with Singaporeans ahead of policy changes is baffling and bares its insecurity.

The topic position is good – the subject is clear. The sentence is going to tell us something about the government. Next, we must ask, does the subject deliver? Yes. The rest of the sentence shows that it does. The stress position also has a powerful word in it – insecurity! But it does not speak clearly enough. Why? Because the stuff in between does not connect well. Let’s start with ‘engagement and consultation.’ Why the repetition? Do both imply the same function, so that one would suffice? And if so, which one? Well, consultation often carries a hierarchical connotation, while engagement often suggests mutual interaction. This makes ‘engagement’ a better choice. However, both these words are nominalizations – verbs that have been changed into nouns - and this weakens clarity. It depends on whether you need to use a verb or a noun in that position. Most of the time, verbs are better off as verbs. Nominalization is a habit that weakens writing strength by reducing the strength of the action. It can be a bad habit. Unless the conversion produces an effect that is precisely what you intend, don’t do it. How do we know which is which? Test out the options for effect, like so…

3.1 The government’s lack of engagement with Singaporeans…

vs

3.2 The government’s unwillingness to engage Singaporeans…

 

Then ask yourself which version suits your intentions better. (I did not say better suits…you don’t have to! This has become a carry-over from a weak attempt to improve stress!) A verb used efficiently always speaks strongly…and such a style makes your intended meaning clear! I substituted lack of with unwillingness to. This is where the thinking comes in. Effective writing does not happen without hard thinking. It just doesn’t. If you weren’t taught this, someone took the easy way out, pushed a bunch of rules on you and let it go at that. Easy approach, I’m sure.  The instructors throw stuff at you and think they are giving so much, but you have to sort it out and figure out what you really need to use! Narrative writing is different, but we’re not going there. 

Let’s take the second half now…

3.3 The government’s unwillingness to engage Singaporeans ahead of policy changes is baffling and bares its insecurity.

a. the phrase ‘ahead of policy changes’ does not help because it is vague – what exactly does ‘ahead’ mean here? And in this case, that which happens ‘ahead’, or does not happen ahead, is important. What is it that we want to see happening ‘ahead?’ Free and open discussion with all parties involved? How shall we say that? And next

b.  ..baffling and bares its insecurity… is a poorly used stress position. Its intent is good. But it speaks weakly and with confusion. Why? Because ‘baffling’ indicates a cloudiness that must be penetrated before we can reach out and grasp the concept or incident referred to; but if its ‘insecurity’ has been bared, i.e. laid open for all to see, then it is already clear. You see the contradiction between the use of ‘baffling’ and ‘bares’! When we describe a feature, our descriptive choices should not contradict but complement. Again, this can be a usable device of some value, if used intentionally. They must work together. This has already been indicated by the lack of engagement – unwilling to engage notion. Strengthen and clarify this – not baffling, but frustrating; not insecurity as much as unwillingness or inability to listen to the people. A matter of word choice here, so as you get started always use a thesaurus to compare depth and degree.  And we now have:

3.4 The government’s unwillingness to engage Singaporeans in open discussion about intended policy changes demonstrates its unwillingness to engage the people it claims to serve.

Good. Further improvement?

3.5 The government’s failure to discuss intended policy changes with Singaporeans demonstrates its unwillingness to allow the people to participate (as vs participation!) in life changing decisions.

Now the sentence is strong. Why? Because policy changes are now shown to result in life changes! You now have the topic linked to the stress emphasis you had in mind! You’ve made the comparison, you can see the difference. The first has good intentions but is ambiguous. It hints at something. The second hits the nail on the head and so delivers impact! This is the result of hard thinking, and you can do it. It just needs habit and discipline.

And the effort must become habitual, to the point of being a reflex. It must be something we do all the time. Not once a week because your instructor said so, or because of a specific work assignment or a report that’s due.  In the effective use of verbs and adjectives, neither a dictionary nor a thesaurus can help beyond a certain point. A piece of writing may look and sound good, but when asked how effective it is, how do we arrive at a response?

We can only go by what others say about its ability to communicate! We must struggle over connoted word meaning as used in our community.⁶ And then go from there. This is why many get stuck when it comes to writing effectively. And why Singlish continues to be popular. It fills the chasm that we were never taught to cross! We may choose impressive sounding words and use them. But the key is whether those words are used in the community to represent specific meaning. If they are not, who will understand? They’re like a loud gong that precedes……. nothing! Like the use of ‘plethora’, ‘paradigm’, and ‘sustainable’, which sound impressive but confuse, or worse, mislead, when used incorrectly!

When you get sentence emphasis correct, you realize that looking at the last few words of a sentence reveals its focus. Or the lack thereof.