International English Style: Clarity, part 1
Moving on to the principles of clarity in Edmond Weiss’s book, The Elements of International English Style:
Weiss opens this chapter with the observation “Writers can never be entirely sure that their writing is clear and unambiguous. Our own writing is nearly always clear to us.” I can certainly testify to that. I usually have a pretty clear idea of what I’m trying to say, but there have been plenty of times that it hasn’t been at all clear to my readers.
Even words that are clear by themselves can become unclear in certain combinations. For example, in the song Monday, Monday by the Mommas and the Poppas, the line “Every other day of the week is fine,” seems perfectly clear, right? Monday is bad, but all the other days are OK.
But the phrase “every other” has another, different meaning in English. “We meet on every other Tuesday.” In this case, it doesn’t mean “all others” in means “alternating.”
This example illustrates a phenomenon called “Clear Only If Known.” If you already know what a sentence means, you can figure out the correct meaning of the ambiguous phrase. But if you don’t, looking each word up in the dictionary isn’t going to give you enough information to figure it out.
Principle #13: Be careful of loosely connected words and phrases. English is a relatively uninflected language; it doesn’t rely on word endings to determine grammatical meaning (and most of us have trouble remembering the few inflections we do have, such as knowing when to use who and whom). Instead of inflections, we rely on word order to determine meaning, which is why you’ll hear grammarians and editors complain about such things as “dangling modifiers.”
E1 readers know enough to compensate for a less-than-ideal word order, but E2 readers aren’t as successful. Therefore, keep descriptive words and phrases as close as possible to the words they modify.
Principle #14: Be aware of frequently misplaced descriptive words. This is closely related to the previous principle, but it calls attention to the words that we frequently misplace, such as only, almost, and nearly. The example Weiss gives is the sentence The inspectors will only leave the site after all five tests. The modifier only is nearest to leave, but what does only leave mean? (I’ve written about the importance of modifier placement here.)
Principle #15: Do not confuse frequently confused terms. Affect and effect; lie and lay; they’re, their, and there … these are some of the words that we mix up when we become careless. For the sake of your E2 readers, don’t.
Roy Jacobsen
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