On Writing Well: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

Most non-writers still have to write at work, whether in the form of memos, emails, or Post-it notes. Meanwhile, the people who run institutions are often terrified of writing, and they produce stilted and artificial-sounding sentences as a result. The writer George Orwell once mocked this kind of “modern bureaucratic fuzz” by rewriting a famous Ecclesiastes verse in it. While the original resembles real human speech and uses familiar words, Orwell’s bureaucratic rewrite is uninspiring and cluttered.

A school district superintendent once hired Zinsser to “dejargonize” his 40 principals’ writing. Zinsser goes through examples of their poor writing: for instance, instead of just asking parents to call their children’s teachers, one principal wrote a standoffish letter about the school’s new “special phone communication system to provide additional opportunities for parent input.” Another principal started with a paragraph of unnecessary jargon before writing a straightforward greeting in his own natural voice. In fact, the principals were often warm and humane when they wrote about student behavior, but vague and incomprehensible when they talked about curriculum. Zinsser taught the principals his rules for good writing: “clarity, simplicity, brevity, and humanity.” They spent all day rewriting memos, and their writing dramatically improved.

When people deal with institutions like schools, companies, and government agencies, they want to hear plain English, not pretentious jargon. Companies lose customers, profits, and prestige when they write badly. Zinsser shows how one “customer bulletin” could be rewritten in plain English, but he notes that most customers will just give up on reading it. Normally, institutions avoid simple, understandable language because their managers think that complexity is a sign of sophistication—but it’s actually a sign of confusion and laziness.

In his corporate workshops, Zinsser usually ends up telling writers to find the people behind the story. For instance, he told one team of writers that, instead of dryly describing a new product, they should talk to the engineers who built it. But the writers complained that the engineers insisted on using acronyms and jargon in order to seem smart. Plus, the writers didn’t want to cause any controversy by trying to sound too personal. Executives make the same grave mistakes: they use complicated language to sound smart, and they write in the company’s generic voice instead of their own personal voice. Zinsser concludes that the basic rule of nonfiction applies to business writing: “whatever your job, whatever your level, be yourself when you write.”