Summer Writing Workshop (4): Elements of Style, Part I

Today's post starts our discussion of Elements of Style.

This section will dig into both the broader constructs and the gritty details of good writing. Topics will include audience and purpose, voice and tone, form, style, word choice, paragraph structure, transitions, and good old grammar.

These topics implicate most directly the DISCLAIMER in my first post (reproduced in full below):*

Language and writing are inherently cultural. My advice in this series is necessarily influenced by my own background.?

Some style points in this series are universalizable. Others are products of my own culture. I will try to differentiate between the two, but we all have cultural blinders that make our own preferences seem "right." Being able to differentiate between which elements of style are universalizable and which are a matter of your own cultural or personal style will itself improve your writing.

Today's post will address audience and purpose, and their implications for some style choices that determine the voice of your writing.

An easy place to start these topics is with this Workshop: How do my audience and purpose affect the many style choices I make in each post?

Before starting the Workshop, I had to think carefully: Who is my audience?

My intended audience is primarily students and junior lawyers from around the world. To be more precise, many of these students and lawyers are either enjoying their summer vacations or writing essays or dissertations. Most of them, like most of us, are intimidated by writing.

Another important secondary target audience is seasoned academics and practitioners.

What is the purpose of the Workshop? My main purpose is to help my primary audience (young students and lawyers) improve their own writing. This main purpose implies a few more subtle purposes.

We started this series with the observation that writing is HARD, but also one of the most important skills a lawyer can have. In light of these observations, another purpose of this Workshop is to make writing less intimidating and more enjoyable for young writers.

Another purpose is to entice my secondary audience--more seasoned lawyers and practitioners--to contribute their own insights about writing.

This understanding of my audience and purposes leads to a number of choices about my form and my voice (which loosely translated means the style and tone of my posts). These choices, in turn, reveal the reasons for many of the structure and grammar choices I make in these posts.

To take one of the most obvious choices about structure and form, I decided to write a series of short posts. This is an obvious choice for a LinkedIn audience. But it is also a wise choice for an audience with limited attention.

Now let's look at one style choice that can be perplexing: perspective. Should you use the first person (I, me, we, or us), the second person (you), or the third person (one or "the author")? Or should I avoid expressly avoid any perspective?

To illustrate, here is an example from yesterday's post:

"Even after I have posted, I end up going back to re-edit each post, sometimes multiple times."

This sentence uses the first person. The use of the first person to convey this content is intended to inspire by example and to express of humility and solidarity with the reader. This choice of perspective is in keeping with my overall purpose of making writing less intimidating.

Let's look at another example:

"Committing to a CFD can help you overcome that daunting feeling you get staring at a blank screen[.]"

Use of the second person here makes tough advice more manageable than if the same advice were written with no perspective: "Writing a CFD is an important first step even if it is difficult." The second person is also more direct and compelling than if the same content were expressed in the third person: "One can always benefit from writing a CDF, even if it is difficult." Notice how a simple grammar choice (perspective) can change the entire tone and effect of the content.

[In later posts, we will discuss language choice ("daunting" instead of "difficult") and use of imagery and metaphor ("staring" and "blank screen").]

Here is another example of the use of the second person, but for a slightly different purpose:

"If you are persuaded now in principle about the importance of rewriting, what does that mean in practice?"

Here, the second person "you" is intended to pull the reader back in, to refocus them on the practical takeaways to follow.

[We will address the use of rhetorical questions later in the series.]

To summarize, in this Workshop, I chose a combination of the first person (I/we) to set readers at ease and establish a friendly tone, but sometimes I address my audience directly in the second person (you, or an implied "you" in an imperative sentence). These choices strike a more collaborative tone and friendly voice, which serve my purpose of enticing my primary audience (students and young lawyers). Drawing from personal experience and writing in a more informal and colorful style also serve this purpose.

Choices about perspective are inextricably tied to your intended audience and purpose. But choices about perspective can also be inherently cultural.

Given my personal and cultural background, I have a deep aversion to the third person ("one" or "the author"). To my ear--as an American English speaker from casual California--use of the third person seems unduly formal, even archaic.

Use of the third person also, to my mind, creates a barrier between you and your audience. That barrier can be eliminated by simply dropping the third person ("First-person prose is more compelling" instead of "This author believes first-person prose is more compelling").

Other writers, particularly those from the United Kingdom, often prefer the third person as a means of conveying authority and establishing an intentional formality in their text. Writing in the third person serves those purposes well.

That's it for today. Tomorrow I will share a number of wonderful books and resources that are invaluable in navigating style and grammar choices (and avoiding mistakes).

#summerwritingworkshop

Anna Howard?Patricia Shaughnessy?Michael Mcilwrath?Stavros Brekoulakis?Dr Crina Baltag, FCIArb?Baiju Vasani?Barry Leon

*DISCLAIMER:?North American authors cited in this post are a prelude to this disclaimer. Language and writing are inherently cultural. As a product of a North American education, my suggestions and advice in this series are necessarily influenced by my own background.?

As discussed later in this series, one of the most important features of good writing is to know and write directly to your audience. Some points in this series are surely universalizable, but others may need to be adapted when you are writing to an audience from a different culture.