#189: Ideas Into Words, Kaplan's Law of Words & Hitchen’s Grandmother

3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Choosing Your Words Carefully

I. Ideas Into Words

Writing is more than just a means of communication, it’s a powerful tool for refining our understanding of a subject.

Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn’t know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas into words is a severe test. The first words you choose are usually wrong; you have to rewrite sentences over and over to get them exactly right. And your ideas won’t just be imprecise, but incomplete too. Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that's why I write them.

—Paul Graham, Putting Ideas Into Words

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II. Kaplan's Law of Words

Any word that isn’t working for you is working against you.

Kaplan’s Law of Words goes back to columnist David Kaplan, specifically his 1990 paper Words. If you read successful writers, from George Orwell to Gary Provost, writing about writing, they all say the same thing: Don’t use more words than necessary.

Kaplan goes one step further, warning us that any superfluous word actively harms our message. Every word in a sentence carries weight. It either contributes to clarity or distracts from the message. If a word doesn’t really or in no particular way, shape or form actively enhance meaning, it really just introduces unnecessary and completely unneeded or even redundant confusion; if you know what I mean?.

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III. Hitchen’s Grandmother

The more you write and edit, the more carefully you choose your words and the less wrong your ideas become. But this also requires that you’re writing something only you could write. Contrarian Christopher Hitchens illustrates this with his grandmother analogy:

Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.

—Christopher Hitchens

🐘

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com