John Peck - Write it Right: The Secrets of Effective Writing

Write it Right

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Write it Right

The Secrets of Effective Writing

2nd edition

John Peck and Martin Coyle

John Peck and Martin Coyle 2005, 2012

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First edition 2005

Second edition 2012

Published by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

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ISBN: 9780230373846

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About this Book

It has often been pointed out that every diet book ever written could be reduced to one sentence: Eat less food, making sure it is the right kind of food. We have written a book about how to write effectively, but the truth is that the entire secret of effective writing can be summed up in one sentence: Write shorter sentences, making sure the sentences are correctly punctuated. That sounds easy enough. As everyone knows, however, writing clearly and correctly, especially in an essay, is always a challenge. There might be a few people with a natural gift for handling words, but most of us find it hard work.

As with so many activities in life, it helps if one gets the basics right. In the case of writing, this starts with being able to produce straightforward and correct sentences. Time and time again, the way of working out how to convey a complex point in an essay is to forget about writing a long and complicated sentence that covers the whole point in detail. Instead, explain the point step by step. Focus on producing a sequence of short sentences that conform to the basic rules of correct usage. The problem is that, by the time we are taking demanding examinations in a variety of subjects, most of us have forgotten a lot of the basic rules about correct usage.

It has always been the same. In the course of writing this book we looked at a large number of grammar and writing guides published over the course of the last hundred years. People a hundred years ago were making just the same mistakes that are made today, and, even more predictably, those who always complain about a decline in standards were, a hundred years ago, making just the same complaints about a decline in the standards of written English. Just when, we wonder, was this golden age when everyone emerged from primary school with a confident awareness of how to write perfect English?

The reason we looked at so many works about language skills was that we were conscious of a very real problem in trying to teach writing through the medium of a book. It might come as something of a surprise, but books about how to write are almost invariably badly written. We dont mean that the authors write ungrammatical sentences, but rather that, in chapter after chapter, they write in a way that fails to command the readers attention. Grammar guides, in particular, tend to be full of hundreds of fragmentary examples and bewildering diagrams. Such guidance might be ideal if you are looking up the solution to a specific problem, but it is difficult to concentrate over the course of several pages of such works. What everyone needs when they read any book is a narrative; that is, they need something that sustains interest and carries them along. But how can this kind of narrative interest be sustained when dry rules are being expounded? Its a bit like the old joke about the telephone directory: great cast of characters, but not much of a plot. Indeed, our impression is that some grammar guides are so complicated that the reader is likely to know less, rather than more, after trying to read them.