Notes from Economical Writing [D McClosey] 1. Writing is the Economist's trade. 2. Writing is thinking.

You can't slip content from style. 3. Rules can help but bad rules hurt. Query any sentence with more than two adjectives in it. Do not use the rule: Say what you're going to say; say it; say that you have said it. Go directly to the point. 4. Be clear. Take care not only that the reader can understand but also that the reader can not possibly misunderstand. Clarity is a matter of speed directed at the point. Bad writing stops you with a puzzle in every other sentence. It sends you off in irrelevant directions. It distracts you from the point, provoking irritated questions about what the subject is now , what the connection might be with the subject a moment ago, and why the words differ. You are always losing your way. Reading your own writing cold, a week after drafting it, will show you places where even you cannot follow the sense of the ease. Knock such places into shape. If the readers have too much trouble they give up. 5. The rules are factual rather than logical. In the best writing, you do not stumble. 6. Classical rhetoric guides even the economical writer.. The rules about whole essays or paragraphs are most useful at the stage of first composition; the rules about sentences and words at the stage of final revision. Some rules apply everywhere: it is good to be brief in the whole essay and in the single word. Brevity is the soul of clarity, too. Remember: Economic poems make remarks about each other, as poems do. Once you have solved one problem by stating it as an analogy you can use the problem as an analogy for others. Once you have grasped the primary analogy you can see others later as analogies to it. It is better to make your own outline, one that fits your argument. 7. Fluency can be achieved by grid (firmness of mid). In clear English: working hard. 8. Write early rather than late. Do not wait until the research is done to begin writing because writing, to repeat, is a way of thinking. Be writing all the time, working on a page or two here, a section there. Research is writing. 9. You will need tools. If you change the typeface on your draft you will see it in a new light. Have a good dictionary always with you. 10. Keep your spirits up, forge ahead. Most research, however, turns out to be irrelevant to the paper you finally write, which is another reason to mix writing with the researching. The writing forces you to ask questions about the facts that are strictly relevant. The guiding question in research is So What? Answer that question in every sentence , and you will become a great scholar; answer it once or twice in a ten page pager and you will write a good one. You hear a sentence when you read it loud. It is a good rule not to write anything you would be embarrassed to say to the intended audience. Keep the finished manuscript in some form handy for rereading and revisiting. At the end of a session, or at any substantial break, always write down your thoughts, however vague, on what will come next. Do not get up without do it.