Writing Good Content

In the 1950’s, college English professor Paul McHenry Roberts, wrote an article entitled “HOW TO SAY NOTHING IN FIVE HUNDRED WORDS.” After reading hundreds of college essays, he just can’t take it anymore. I don’t recall being in his class in college, but it sure sounds like I might have been.

He blasts the typical college essay writing style and gives 9 ways to bring great content to your writing. Here they are in brief form.

1) Avoid the obvious content–Begin by putting down the arguments that come to your mind. Now when you write your paper, make sure that you don’ t use any of the material on this list.

2) Take the less usual side–Always take the side that looks to you hardest, least defensible. It will almost always turn out to be easier to write interestingly on that side.

3) Slip out of abstraction–For most the soundest advice is to be seeking always for the picture, to be always turning general remarks into seeable examples.

4) Get rid of obvious padding–Instead of taking a couple of obvious points off the surface of the topic and then circling warily around them for six paragraphs, you work in and explore, figure out the details. You illustrate.

5) Call a fool a fool–Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words.

6) Beware of Pat Expressions–Other things being equal, avoid phrases like “other things being equal.”

7) Colorful Words–By this we mean that they are calculated to produce a picture or induce an emotion. They are dressy instead of plain, specific instead of general, loud instead of soft.

8) Colored Words–When we hear a word, we hear with it an echo of all the situations in which we have heard it before.

9) Colorless Words–Colorless words are those of such general meaning that in a particular sentence they mean nothing.

HT: Doshdosh