"How to Write Well"

[Note: everything in the post except for this note, including the title, is taken directly from Greg Mankiw's Blog. Rather than linking to it I figure it is easier for me to just copy the text and cite the source. For those of you outside of the world of economics, Mankiw (sometimes referred to as variations on N. Gregory Mankiw) is a famous economist who headed the Council of Economic Advisers under Bush 43 from 2003 to 2005 and teaches at Harvard. The original post can be found here.]

When I was CEA chair, I sent the following guidelines to my staff as they started drafting the Economic Report of the President. A friend recently emailed me a copy, and I thought I would share them with blog readers. They are good rules of thumb, especially for economists writing for a general audience.

ERP Writing Guidelines

• Stay focused. Remember the take-away points you want the reader to remember. If some material is irrelevant to these points, it should probably be cut.
• Keep sentences short. Short words are better than long words. Monosyllabic words are best.
• The passive voice is avoided by good writers.
• Positive statements are more persuasive than normative statements.
• Use adverbs sparingly.
• Avoid jargon. Any word you don’t read regularly in a newspaper is suspect.
• Never make up your own acronyms.
• Avoid unnecessary words. For instance, in most cases, change
  o “in order to” to “to”
  o “whether or not” to “whether”
  o “is equal to” to “equals”
• Avoid “of course, “clearly,” and “obviously.” Clearly, if something is obvious, that fact will, of course, be obvious to the reader.
• The word “very” is very often very unnecessary.
• Keep your writing self-contained. Frequent references to other works, or to things that have come before or will come later, can be distracting.
• Put details and digressions in footnotes. Then delete the footnotes.
• To mere mortals, a graphic metaphor, a compelling anecdote, or a striking fact is worth a thousand articles in Econometrica.
• Keep your writing personal. Remind readers how economics affects their lives.
• Remember two basic rules of economic usage:
  o “Long run” (without a hyphen) is a noun. “Long-run” (with a hyphen) is an adjective. Same with “short(-)run.”
  o “Saving” (without a terminal s) is a flow. “Savings” (with a terminal s) is a stock.
• Buy a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Also, William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. Read them—again and again and again.
• Keep it simple. Think of your reader as being your college roommate who majored in English literature. Assume he has never taken an economics course, or if he did, he used the wrong textbook.

A quicker set of links

Sorry for all the posts that I have been making that are not much more than lists of links. I will work on cutting back, and not just by making fewer posts with more links. That will start right after I give you a few links:

• Dr. Grammar's Frequently Asked Questions - I have only clicked on a handful of these, but I agreed with the answers to all of them. A good resource for our debates, though I think it should be used only after an argument based on prior knowledge;
• "15 Amazing Yearbook Photos of U.S. Politicians" and also "12 Amazing Celebrity Yearbook Photos" - Jimmy Carter is terrifying.
• "5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy" - My personal favorite of the group, this article is exactly what it sounds like, describing each of five men in the categories "Who was he?", (where the fuck does this comma go?) "The best Hollywood could come up with," and "Why it doesn't compare." My only problem with Cracked.com is that I get sucked into reading fifteen different lists with titles like "7 Historical Figures Who Were Absurdly Hard to Kill."
  

Conservapedia Nuance

It's clear "the trustworthy encyclopedia" is raising the level of debate when it comes to Commerce Secretary-nominee Judd Gregg.

There's no link to this directly but for a few days it should be on the main page: of the Republican whose departure from the Senate could give the Democrats the overblown total of 60 senators, the encyclopedia asks: "Benedict Arnold or Judas?"

(Actually, they had an extra comma in the question. Also, this is one of the few instances when I do agree with the standard rule on quotation mark/punctuation mark ordering)

Fish and Fishes

I recently found myself in yet another debate over the usage of "fish" vs. "fishes" and other similar issues.

Unless I'm mistaken, I'm rather sure that "fish" just refers to more than one fish whereas "fishes" refers to more than one type of fish.

Anyway, I figure that sort of thing has to have a name but I couldn't find one. Anybody got any ideas? In the process I came across interesting words Ichthyology and Isogloss.

Final thought: does the same rule apply to "persons" and "people"?

Scare quotes

The New Republic has a pretty funny article posted right now about the WSJ editorial board's use of scare quotes. According to the article, "Like most of us, the Journal [editorial board] uses scare quotes to signify that a term is misleading." The problem, argues The New Republic, is that The WSJ uses quotation marks in ways that seem to either indicate a certain level of incompetency in the use of the English language or a disdain for certain policies. Assuming that one of the respected papers in our country can speak our language, that leads us to the conclusion that The WSJ is simply implying a lot more than it is saying, an interesting practice for a news source.

I am posting this more because of my own frustration with the overuse of quotation marks than because of my opinions about the WSJ editorial staff (opinions that are more or less nonexistent).

Dangling Modifiers

I'll keep it short: I read this blurb in NYT about dangling modifiers ("As the Blues forward tried to deflect the puck past the goalie, he snatched it with his glove.").

Hardly any time at all later, I read this article at HuffPo, which began with this sentence:

"A friend of French money manager Thierry de la Villehuchet told a paper that he committed suicide in his New York office early Tuesday morning."

Wow. I've never heard anyone report their suicide to a newspaper before.

News and Notes

I'm sure you've thought to yourself before how annoying (and similar) the "extreme" graphics employed by CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News are.  Well, if you've ever thought the same thing about their sound effects, you're not alone.

In other news, the Arena Football League is cancelling its 2009 season.  It was, however, quick to point out that it is cancelling only the 2009 season.  Here's my favorite quotation: "This is the farthest thing from the league folding.  This is, in my opinion, just showing us the league will not fold."

Finally, despite my knowledge that it is grammatically imperative to use the word "quotation" where I did above, I felt like losing part of my soul for not using the more conversational "quote."

Wal-Mart 2008

RealClearMarkets just posted a really interesting writeup of an updated Wal-Mart effect. In the same way that I am upset by my dependence on Google in the electronic world I am concerned by the increasing dominance of Wal-Mart in the retail sector. Possible discussion topics for people to use as rant starting points: dangers and advantages of a dominant chain in such an important market (remember how large a portion of income is spent on groceries, clothing, and relatively cheap entertainment goods); visceral reactions to Wal-Mart based on domestic and/or international labor issues; a comparison of Wal-Mart's and Google's strategies and popularity.

Another grammar check: If I am going to the house owned by Marcia and Dave am I going to "Marcia and Dave's house" or to "Marcia's and Dave's house"? I argue that the first is grammatically correct but that the second makes a whole hell of a lot more sense based on the fact that it demonstrates the possessive for each individual. Perhaps the entire sentence structure is flawed and should simply be rephrased to avoid confusion.

Obama uses sentences

I liked this article because it was funny, but also because it reminded me that Obama actually is the President-elect.

Grammar Time

"After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States."

-New York Times

OK, so basically my understanding was that you can say "Barack Obama proved ..." or "Barack Obama has proven," but not "has proved." Am I crazy?

(Side note: I want to have a discussion about quotation marks and commas sometime)

Also, now that I've been staring at the word 'proven' for the last two minutes, my brain is now quite sure I can't possibly be spelling it right. Really stare at that and try to convince yourself it's pronounced the way it is (then again, maybe it's just the font that is used when you create a post).

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Here's another question, one on which I'm sure I'll run into some opposition. So, the conventional wisdom is that if you're discussing a noun that begins with a vowel, you precede it with "an" as opposed to "a," as in "an obligation."

But my understanding is that whether it begins with a vowel is irrelevant; it's whether it begins with a vowel sound. I guess this distinction isn't directly important to my point, which was going to be that I can't stand hearing the phrase "an historical," as in, "from an historical perspective."

Perhaps if you live in England, where "I have to hunt to be happy" turns into "I 'ave to 'unt to be 'appy" you could say an historical, but otherwise, my understanding is it's just plain wrong. Nonetheless, it's something I hear very well-educated people say on a regular basis, so again, maybe I'm missing something. Thoughts?

A new grammar debate: the serial comma.

Background information.

I would like a bit more arguing on this site, as we tend to agree on politics, the de facto topic of choice for this blog. To that end, I am curious to hear opinions on use of the serial comma. I am strongly in favor of the serial comma as the standard rather than the exception because it is the least likely form to lead to ambiguity. I will even go one step beyond this and argue that in the cases in which the serial comma would lead to ambiguity the sentence should be rephrased, as it is clearly confusing in its current form.

In case you would like to hear a song about the serial comma, check out "Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend. The band sounds like a strange combination of Peter Gabriel, The Police, and Paul Simon. Perfect time to use the serial comma.

Update: As it turns out, this is the 100th post on this site. Way to go, everyone. Chris, thanks for keeping this going when the rest of us slack off. I don't know about everyone else, but I appreciate the updates even when I am not posting regularly.