Okay, I promise it’s not that weird; it’s just fun to appropriate click-bait headlines. And I won’t make you sit through a 25-minute video or scroll through pages of text before I share this trick with you.
As I’ve noted before, writing is easy, but good writing is hard. However, there are a few simple things that you can do to improve your writing, including many of the tips that are on this blog.
One of my favorite tips is something simple but really effective at making your writing clearer and easier to follow. Let’s see if you can figure out what this trick is by seeing it in action.
Take a look at the following paragraphs:
Paragraph 1
The word trebuchet comes from French. A trebuchet is a kind of catapult that uses a counterweight and a long arm to throw a projectile. Siege engines like catapults and trebuchets were often used in the Middle Ages until the widespread use of gunpowder. The design of a trebuchet is superior to that of a catapult because it can hurl projectiles much farther than a catapult can. The traction trebuchet, operated by men, is one kind of trebuchet that originated in China. The Christian and Muslim kingdoms around the Mediterranean developed the counterweight or counterpoint trebuchet. This trebuchet used a counterweight to swing the arm.
Paragraph 2
A trebuchet (pronounced “tre-byu-shay,” from the French) is a kind of catapult that uses a counterweight and a long arm to throw a projectile. Trebuchets were used in the Middle Ages as siege engines until the widespread use of gunpowder. They had a superior design to that of a catapult because they could hurl projectiles much farther than a catapult could. Trebuchets came in two main varieties: the traction trebuchet, developed in China, which used men to swing the arm, and the counterweight or counterpoint trebuchet, developed in the Christian and Muslim kingdoms around the Mediterranean, which used a counterweight to swing the arm.
Did you spot the difference?
At first glance, there isn’t much difference between the two paragraphs. In fact, they communicate all the same information. But the second paragraph is much easier to read and has a much better flow. The difference between the two paragraphs that makes one far more readable than the other is the choice of sentence subject.
In the first paragraph, the subject of each sentence is different from those before and after it, whereas in the second paragraph, all the sentences have the same subject:
Paragraph 1
The word trebuchet comes from French. A trebuchet is a kind of catapult that uses a counterweight and a long arm to throw a projectile. Siege engines like catapults and trebuchets were often used in the Middle Ages until the widespread use of gunpowder. The design of a trebuchet is superior to that of a catapult because it can hurl projectiles much farther than a catapult can. Men operated the traction trebuchet, which is a kind of trebuchet that originated in China. The Christian and Muslim kingdoms around the Mediterranean developed the counterweight or counterpoint trebuchet. This trebuchet used a counterweight to swing the arm.
Paragraph 2
A trebuchet (pronounced “tre-byu-shay,” from the French) is a kind of catapult that uses a counterweight and a long arm to throw a projectile. Trebuchets were used in the Middle Ages as siege engines until the widespread use of gunpowder. They had a superior design to that of a catapult because they could hurl projectiles much farther than a catapult could. Trebuchets came in two main varieties: the traction trebuchet, developed in China, which used men to swing the arm, and the counterweight or counterpoint trebuchet, developed in the Christian and Muslim kingdoms around the Mediterranean, which used a counterweight to swing the arm.
This really is a simple trick, but it greatly improves the clarity of your writing. In addition, making sure all the sentences in a given paragraph have the same subject is a good way to ensure that your writing is focused and organized. If you’re finding that the subjects of your paragraph’s sentences are all over the place, that’s a good indication that you need to organize your thoughts better.
Now, doing this isn’t going to guarantee that you’re the next Hemingway, Morrison, or Garcia-Márquez, but it does mean that whatever you write will be far more comprehensible than a stream-of-consciousness rant on social media. And these days, that’s something.