Efficient Writing

Professional Writing Workshop

HU Yue

School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University

Overview1

  • Sentence
  • Paragraph
  • Document

Within-sentence writing

Writing efficiently ⇏ writing simply

How is this sentence?

What those of us who know Agee’s criticism almost by heart read over and over, however, is the reviews that appeared in The Nation (Denby 2006).

Psychological phases of reading

  1. Identify the words and their meaning;
  2. Confirm their accuracy referring to the long-term memories;
  3. Explicit inference that sentences are in a causal order

Psychological steps of reading

  1. Lexical processing
  2. Syntactic processing
  3. Inference processing

⇓

Clarity + concision

Clarity

Generate causal relationships (“who do what”)

  1. Active over passive
    • Avoid “there be”
    • Exceptions:
      1. Use passive constructions if the entire section employ it or a lot of we/I involved otherwise
      2. When the actors are unknown or the outcomes is more important
      3. Legal liability
  1. Use action verbs
  2. Concrete subjects
  3. Early and close S+V

Action verbs

Non-action verb

Was, appears, constitutes, represents, has been, make (a deal), give (a break), take (a hike)……

  • When using a non-action verb
    • your sentence no longer tells a story.
    • Non-action verbs are harder to remember
    • Make the sentence longer (by adding prepositions, prep.)

Example

Bad: Chess Aviation has an excellent concept. The idea of catering any service to the extremely wealthy has always been a viable idea. Airline service is necessary for most high-level executives of corporations, businessmen, and wealthy individuals. The airline service that is provided by commercial carriers is extremely poor.

Good: The management team has built Chess Aviation around an excellent concept: catering to the extremely wealthy. Many high-net-worth individuals fly frequently, including wealthy businessmen and high-level executives of corporations. However, commercial air carriers tend to provide poor service, falling far short of what affluent people expect.

Example 2

Bad: 新能源汽车市场有巨大的发展潜力。电动汽车技术的推广是当前环保政策的重要组成部分。消费者对传统燃油车的需求正在发生变化。政府补贴政策的实施对市场增长是有帮助的。充电基础设施的建设存在不足的问题。

Good:新能源汽车市场展现出巨大的发展潜力。政府积极推广电动汽车技术，将其作为环保政策的核心举措。消费者逐渐转向环保出行方式，减少对传统燃油车的依赖。政府补贴政策有效刺激了市场增长。然而，充电基础设施建设滞后，制约了行业发展。

Concrete objects

  • Avoid isolated pronouns (this, that)
    • If you have to pair with a noun (this idea, that evidence)
  • Avoid using phrases and clauses as the grammatical subjects
  • Gerund phrases slow down the readers’ speed and trigger needless cortical activation
    1. A verb doesn’t perform as a verb
    2. Stay in a place that confuse readers what it is grammatically
    3. Encouraging writers to lard with more complicated clauses
  • If one can’t avoid using a phrase as the subject, keep it short

Example

Bad：Integrating the fragments gleaned from a sentence into a vast mental database to be recalled at a later point when they become useful could tax even a brain like Einstein’s.

Bad: 通过反复阅读古典文学作品来深入理解其中蕴含的文化内涵并将这些理解转化为自己的知识体系以便在学术研究中运用这一学习方法对于大多数本科生而言都是极其困难的。

S close to V

  • Readers won’t begin comprehending sentences until reaching the subject
    • Readers notice less the details before the subject or between the subject and verb
    • Basic format: Subject first, then verb, then details

Example

Bad: The short longevity of most common restorations and especially those of resin-based composite materials calls for detailed studies of factors which may lead to an extension of the lifetime of restorations

Bad: 这个在清华大学学习计算科学并且已经获得了多项国际竞赛奖项同时还在一家知名科技公司实习的学生昨天发表了一篇重要论文。

Concision

语言的目的是使人一看就明白，一听就记住。语言的唯一标准，是准确。(汪曾祺 2020)

  1. Avoid redundant pairs
    • When using “n. and n.,” think about removing one n.
  2. Avoid redundant modifiers
    • Adj. and adv.
  3. Avoid negatives
  4. Avoid narrating or hedging
  5. Avoid throat-clearing, e.g., in order to

Examples(汪曾祺 2020)

横穿马路不要低头猛跑
残菜剩饭必须回锅见开再吃

Metadiscourse

  • Metadiscourse: writing about the act of writing
  • Types of metadiscourse
    • Transitions: but,however,inaddition, first, last, for example
    • Frame Markers: this study proposes to, we intend to, in conclusion
    • Evidentials: according to a White House source, Douglas et al. state
    • Hedges: virtually, probably, in all likelihood, most likely
    • Boosters: indeed, clearly, evidently, of course
    • Engagement Markers: This attitude contrasts strikingly with our expectations for the way readers’ brains process metadiscourse; This methodology relies on retrospective data analysis, lending itself to biased interpretations of data
    • Attitude Markers: We were surprised to discover; I can only imagine your distress at this development
    • Self-mentions: I find this researcher’s explanation to be clever but also slick and insufficiently explanatory for why our brains respond to art; I can recall sharing our community’s outrage during that media event; I am convinced I’m the perfect candidate for this research fellowship.

How to use metadiscourse

  1. Use frame makers only in the form of transition;
  2. Incorporate evidentials into the central sentence structure
  3. Use self-mentions/engagement markers only to establish a conversational tone
  4. Avoid all other metadiscourse, esp. emphatics and boosters
  5. Transitions should not be restricted

Between Sentences

Continuity + Cadence

Continuity

Let the readers understand the relationship between sentences.

Memory ladder of a sentence/paragraph/document

The last > the beginning > the middle

  1. Place the most important information at the ends of things
  2. Use transitions to tie sentences together
  3. Sequence information in sentences in a familiar–unfamiliar pattern
  4. Try to keep grammatical subjects consistent from sentence to sentence

How to use the above principles

  • Use the continuity principle #1 and a mixture of 2–5
  • Continuity is more important than clarity

Place the most important in the ends

  • The emphasis range: the last 1/3~1/4 of the sentence
  • Less important at the beginning or else where
    • E.g., prepositional phrases (where and when) are least important (in most cases)
      • Put at the beginning, not the end of a sentence

Example

Bad: My manager tore my proposal to shreds, told me I was a waste of space, then demanded I pack up my desk and get the hell out of the office during last week.

Good: Last week, my manager tore my proposal to shreds, told me I was a waste of space, then demanded I pack up my desk and leave.

Be careful with long sentences

  • Three sins of long sentences:
    1. Few cues about which information is important that readers should remember
    2. Long sentences also has the same proportion of emphasis
    3. Demand more working memory
  • Same logic: List fewer than six items

Examples

Bad: Wolfe certainly invokes the key figures—William James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Charles Sanders Peirce (rather sheepishly)—but he also draws upon Immanuel Kant, Jean-Paul Sartre, René Descartes, as well as more current figures such as Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, and Cornel West, if only to remind us that pragmatism, especially Rorty’s strain, may want to express an alterity, an outside of “theory,” but it is very much a part of the system.

Good: With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations (Lincoln 1865).

Good: 在这个时候，我们提出划分敌我和人民内部两类矛盾的界限，提出正确处理人民内部矛盾的问题，以便团结全国各族人民进行一场新的战争——向自然界开战，发展我们的经济，发展我们的文化，使全体人民比较顺利地走过目前的过渡时期，巩固我们的新制度，建设我们的新国家，就是十分必要的了。(毛泽东 1957)

Use transitions

  • Transitions have to appear towards the beginning to be effective
    • Approximately every two to three sentences
    • “Also” or “too” at the end of the sentence is not effective for transition

Myth you wish never learned

  • Not beginning a sentence with “and” or “but”
  • Never write long sentences

Example

Bad: Rogers, Sanborn & Son had left the project and the site in limbo for several years. The team discussed the liabilities of building on the site, the difficulties in minimizing the environmental impacts, and the necessity of driving foundations on piles, then Sanders & Co. decided to give up on the project, too.

Good: Rogers, Sanborn & Son left the project and the site in limbo for over five years. Similarly, Sanders & Co. also decided to give up on the project after the team discussed the project’s numerous challenges. These challenges include (1) the liabilities of building on the site, (2) difficulties in minimizing environmental impacts, and (3) the necessity of driving foundations on piles.

Sequence information

  • Referential continuity: The later sentence refers implicitly or explicitly to the preceding sentence
  • Referential continuity make stronger recall
    • People process familiar information before new and automatically see relevance in statements with their world

Example

Bad: Banks within a particular market tried to shore up their particular market share, a practice that left them exposed to a buyout. Other banking institutions were expanding outside their current markets. The federal government could force an institution to sell itself to a buyer that the federal government had already chosen. The buyer normally bought the bank being sold because the bank’s sale price had fallen beneath its market value.

Good: Banks within a particular market tried to shore up their respective market share, a practice that left banks exposed to a buyout. This practice allowed for other banking institutions to expand outside their current markets. In some cases the federal government could force the entity to sell itself to a buyer that the federal government had already chosen. When given this option, the buyer normally bought the bank being sold because the bank’s sale price had fallen beneath its market value.

Repetition is not a bad thing

  • Two reasons why repetition of key concepts as the grammatical subject is good:
    1. The priming effect mark the subjects as important
    2. The priming effect enables readers to recognize the topic of the paragraphs, i.e., the macrostructure of the paragraph
  • When writers use multiple terms to refer to the same thing, readers get confused
  • Frequently using one concept improve readers’ recalling rate
    • Eye-tracking evidence:
      1. Readers pause significantly at the beginning of sentences
      2. Readers read faster when the sentences refer to the preceding sentence
      3. Readers focus on common wordings

Cadence

Making music with words.

  1. Vary the structure of your sentences
    • The brains use overlapping auditory and visual processing during reading
    • Transitions can bring cadence
  2. Vary the lengths of your sentences
  3. In a list, series of phrases, or entire sentence, place the item with the least number of words and syntactic complexity attached to it first, with the longest item, last

Varying the structure

Your sentences seem to lack syntactic complexity.
Your reader can feel jack-hammered by your sentence structure.
Your reader might guess that you stopped reading even cereal boxes long ago.
Your sentences all observe clarity and continuity principles.
And yet something feels wrong.
Something is wrong.
Your sentences are all the same type simple.
Your sentences all begin the same way.
Your readers perceive your writing as the equivalent of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” rather than something by Rachmaninoff.
You’re not out to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. You just aim to sound authoritative, not amateurish or idiotic.

When you ignore cadence, your sentences will seem to lack syntactic complexity.
Your readers can feel jack-hammered by your sentence structure, and they might guess that you stopped reading even cereal boxes long ago.
Note that all these sentences observe clarity and continuity principles—yet something feels wrong.
In fact, something is wrong. Your sentences are all the same type – simple.
(If you’re flummoxed by the difference between simple, compound, and compound-complex sentences, see the Supplement, page 164).
For starters, your sentences all begin the same way, with not only the same words but also the same sentence structure: Subject–verb.
Subject–verb.
Subject–verb.
Moreover, with your over-reliance on one kind of sentence structure and length, your readers can perceive your writing as the equivalent of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” rather than something by Rachmaninoff.
While you’re not out to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, you do, however, aim to sound authoritative – not amateurish or idiotic.

Varying the lengths

Bad: People enjoy corporate-owned coffee joints.
Even people who don’t enjoy drinking coffee enjoy corporate coffee joints.
They love this magical land where the word “tall” equals small.
People love using words in Italian and not knowing what they mean.
They like how every store has the same atmosphere.
There’s a certain comfort to be found in familiarity.

Good： People enjoy corporate-owned coffee joints.
Even people who don’t enjoy drinking coffee enjoy corporate coffee joints.
They love this magical land where the word “tall” equals small, where they get to use words in Italian and not know what they mean.
They like how every store has the same atmosphere and find a certain comfort in familiarity.

That’s why we keep one sentence a line in the editor

Strategic list

Bad: We ended the day with a recall of the week’s events: the days spent digging ditches, swatting at plane-sized mosquitoes, squinting into driving rain, and work.

Good：We ended the day with a recall of the week’s events: the work, the days spent digging ditches, squinting into driving rain, and swatting at plane-sized mosquitoes.

Bad: Of the many areas of science important to our future, few are more promising than a new way of manipulating the elemental structural units of life itself, which are the genes and chromosomes that tell our cells how to reproduce to become the parts that constitute our bodies, or genetic engineering.

Good：Of the many areas of science important to our future, few fields are more promising than genetic engineering, a new way of manipulating the elemental structural units of life, including the genes and chromosomes that both instruct our cells on reproduction and ultimately create our entire bodies.

Paragraphs

Coherence

Coherence

Giving readers predictions

  • Shorter paragraphs -> less cognitive overhead
    • Frequent changes in focus -> maintaining readers’ interest

How people read emails

Readers of online text (email, etc.) usually focus only on the first few liens of the first paragraph and then those of the next

  1. Begin each paragraph with a set of comprehensive overview sentences, a paragraph head
  2. Support each paragraph’s head with a body
  3. Place your thesis at the end of the head paragraph(s)
  4. Apply paragraph head and body organization to the entire document

Paragraph structure

Paragraph head promises; paragraph body delivers

  • The first sentence is an overture not a topic sentence: an overview rather than cram everything into a single sentence
    • Use two or three sentences if necessary as the head, just make sure being at the the beginning of a paragraph
    • Functions of paragraph heads:
      1. Priming readers
      2. Giving linguistic cues
      3. Providing explicit indications
    • Don’t make the paragraph head longer than a third of the paragraph

Example

Bad: For the large competitors such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, and the others, their biggest strength is their name and the resources available to them. These companies are able to enter almost any market and to provide employees with a particular expertise in the client’s subject matter. The major weakness, however, exists in these companies’ overhead and the lack of specialization in a particular area. With resources spread all over the country and world these companies can find costly and time-consuming the effort of bringing the right employees together. This location issue and high overhead costs translate into high billing rates. These high billing rates of the “Big Four” consulting firms are heavily watched by the senior executives in our client’s firm. As a result, we find it often difficult, even impossible, to sign longterm contracts with our clients because we are one of the “Big Four” and such an engagement would set off red flags with the senior executives. Our smaller competitors have realized these weaknesses and have designed business models to get around many of the issues faced by the largest competitors in the industry.

Good: The size and reputation of the “Big Four” accounting agencies can actually work against them where clients are concerned. With resources scattered nation- and world-wide, Big Four agencies often expend substantial costs merely bringing the right employees together. Unfortunately, these location and overhead costs translate into high billing rates. As a result of these costly rates, many clients seek out smaller firms, since senior executives would view contracting with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, and others as needlessly costly. On the other hand, our smaller competitors have realized these weaknesses and designed business models to take advantage of them.

Example

Bad: The “hands-on” approach with personal instruction certainly appeals to the typical student. Although labeled as innovative, the approach outlined by Mr. Hutton details no new techniques for training that differentiate ITS from competitors. With 15 students anticipated per class, Mr. Hutton’s ability to provide individual attention to a particular student will be constrained. Also, the business plan fails to make clear the range of services ITS will provide. Furthermore, small businesses may be unwilling to invest in training for standard software applications, like the programs in Microsoft Office, since most entry-level jobs now require these skills of would-be employees.

Good: Throughout Irish history, countless generations of exiles have cast off from the shores of Ireland in search of sanctuary, adventure and alliances. After the signing of the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, the “Flight of the Wild Geese” marked the watershed moment of Irish migration to the European Continent. Nineteen thousand Catholic Irishmen and their families sailed to France in the hope of one day returning to free Ireland from English tyranny. For the next hundred years ships arriving on the west coast of Ireland would depart with Irish recruits listed in ships’ manifests as “Wild Geese” for the armies of Europe. Using this label to escape detection by English authorities, these Wild Geese would serve in armies across the Continent, including Napoleon’s. Ultimately, these Irish soldiers and their descendants would fan out across Europe and eventually influence power, politics, and business throughout the Continent well into the twentieth century.

Paragraph heads

Good paragraph head: Provide specific guides of the following sentences, such as I will give three points…

  • Strategies to create paragraph heads
    1. Try sketching out your points for your paragraphs on a scrap of paper before you begin writing each one.
    2. Write a brief sentence or two that cover the contents of those points.
    3. Work on your paragraph heads in even informal modes of writing, like email.
    4. Focus on identifying paragraph heads whenever you read any form of published writing.

Don’t overload your paragraph head

Paragraph head only about the immediate paragraph not multiple

Paragraph body

  • Should be at least twice longer than the head sentences
  • Never introduce a topic in your paragraph body that you haven’t mentioned or covered in your paragraph head
  • Place the thesis at the end of the head paragraph(s)
    • The thesis sentence is a one-sentence summary
    • Recency effect: the ends are more able to be recalled
      • Put the thesis sentence at the end of the introductory paragraphs to prime the recency effect
      • Use a preliminary thesis at the end of the first paragraph to inform the main topic of the document before the real thesis comes out
  • End complexity stuff with a conclusion paragraph/sentence: a one-sentence summary of the paragraph’s takeaways

Example

Bad: On a Friday morning in April, I strapped on a headset, leaned into a microphone, and experienced what had been described to me as a type of time travel to the future of higher education. I was on the ninth floor of a building in downtown San Francisco, in a neighborhood whose streets are heavily populated with winos and vagrants, and whose buildings host hip new businesses, many of them tech start-ups. In a small room, I was flanked by a publicist and a tech manager from an educational venture called the Minerva Project, whose founder and CEO, the 39-year-old entrepreneur Ben Nelson, aims to replace (or, when he is feeling less aggressive, “reform”) the modern liberal-arts college.

Document heads

  1. Introducing the wording
  2. Central points of the document
  3. Repetition to make emphases

The document head should skip the backstory.

That’s why the so-called “研究背景” is nonsense.

Wrap up

  • Within Sentence
    • Clarity
    • Concision
  • Between Sentences
    • Continuity
    • Cadence
  • Paragraph
    • Coherence

Important

Coherence > Continuity > Concision > Clarity > Cadence

Thanks

  sammo3182

  yuehu@tsinghua.edu.cn

  https://www.drhuyue.site

Reference

Denby, David. 2006. “A Famous Man.” The New Yorker, January 1, 2006.
Douglas, Yellowlees. 2015. The Reader’s Brain: How Neuroscience Can Make You a Better Writer. Cambridge University Press.
Lincoln, Abraham. 1865. “Second Inaugural Address.” In Abraham Lincoln Papers （1837-1897）. General Correspondence 3. Library of Congress.
McEnerney, Larry, dir. 2014. The Craft of Writing Effectively.
毛泽东. 1957. “关于正确处理人民内部矛盾的问题.” 人民日报, June 19, 1957.
汪曾祺. 2020. 汪曾祺的写作课. 江苏凤凰文艺出版社.