Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

unemployedprofessors OP t1_jc4se4r wrote

Reply to comment by Immaculate_Erection in We are Unemployed Professors, and we've been writing the things other people don't want to write for 12 years. AUA. by unemployedprofessors

  1. Use the rule of 3's. No more than 3 points / ideas overall (if possible), no more than 3 clauses per sentence, try to use 3 examples to support each claim.
  2. Write in a goal-oriented way. If you're not sure about what you have written, ask what the sentence, or page, or paragraph, etc., is doing. If you don' t have a good answer, cut it or revise it.
  3. Counterintuitive: Don't get so caught up in being "concise" that you sacrifice clarity or effectiveness (or so caught up in being "clear" that you sacrifice effectiveness and concision...etc.); don't forget that the best writing often violates prescriptive rules; don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Often, people are better writers than they give themselves credit for, and worrying about whether a piece of writing fits into the paradigm of "clear, concise, effective" (or any other) can keep you from evaluating whether it truly does - which you can generally learn best by letting it out into the wild.
16