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From the course: Writing with Flair: How to Become an Exceptional Writer

Fancy, flowery, and official language

From the course: Writing with Flair: How to Become an Exceptional Writer

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Fancy, flowery, and official language

“

- One big thing that stands in the way of simplicity in your writing is fancy or flowery language when simple things are stated in a pointlessly fancy way. Now, by fancy language, I don't mean language that's colorful and evocative, and that helps to get your meaning across in an interesting or stimulating way. I'm talking about pointlessly fluffy and long-winded ways of saying things that make your writing basically slow and heavy. To avoid this kind of pointlessly flowery language, say what you wanna say in as simple a way as possible, and then spice it up as necessary if you need to afterwards. Look at this sentence which illustrates fancy writing on the website of the plain English writing campaign. I think it's called the Plain English Campaign. High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for the facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process. You've probably come across such writing in government reports or in internal communications. There's the assumption that professional writing needs to sound somehow different, more official than ordinary writing. And that idea does tremendous damage to people's growth as competent writers. I'd advise you to shun such pretentious writing in almost every context, because it doesn't really help your communication at all, unless of course, you deliberately want to hide something. With writing like this, it's as if there's something more, a more concrete idea hidden in the weeds of the sentence that's struggling to get out. Now the reason it feels like that is because it's just simply not plain enough. Where the meaning doesn't hit you instantly, your communication is really falling short. If I was confronted with a sentence like this as an editor, I'd straightaway begin looking for what the specific idea is that's yearning to get out of this horrible abstraction. And I'd look for the plainest way possible of saying it. Now, my advice to avoid this kind of pointlessly long-winded language could really have gone into any of the sections of this course, because it's so bad stylistically. Apart from not being simple, it isn't terribly clear either because it's just so abstract. It definitely isn't elegant either. Just look at the sentence. It's ugly as anything, right? And it certainly isn't stimulating to read, because it doesn't create any pictures for the reader. It's just a lot of dry words. So it's not evocative either. In other words, this sort of fancy language fails to deliver on all aspects of beauty. Now let's say you discover this kind of sentence in your own writing, right? High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process. Getting to the habit of deconstructing things like that, and then stating them much more plainly, it will bring a breath of fresh air of simplicity to your writing, because believe it or not, abstract, bureaucratic, and unnecessarily official writing remains a very common practice. The good news is that you really can distinguish yourself massively just by focusing on fixing this particular bad tendency. So let's ask what might the writer be really trying to say here? High-quality learning environments, let's break it down, right? Now, what exactly does learning environments actually mean? How could we express that in a more plain way? Could the writer be talking about schools? This does seem to be the case here. So let's assume it's schools that the writer is really talking about in this sentence. What would high-quality mean in that context? It seems to me just a fancier way of saying good schools, right? So the next one, are a necessary precondition, we're just breaking it down further. Is there a clearer way, a more concrete way, of saying that? How about just are needed? If we use that, then so far, we'll have good schools are needed. Now what's next? For facilitation and enhancement. Can you think of a more simple way of saying that? Well, how about to improve, or to enhance, or to support? The word facilitation actually seems a little bit pointless in that sentence anyway. So I personally think that the word support captures the meaning best of the sentence. And that gives us this, good schools are needed to support. So you see how we've gone from the abstraction down to something much more straightforward and plain. What's next? Of the ongoing learning process. Now to me, all that just means, is learning. So then we get good schools are needed to support learning. Now that we've unmasked the idea to some extent, we can actually begin to evaluate it properly, right? And to be honest, it's a pretty weak idea beneath all that sophistry. It wasn't all that easy to see how weak it was. Good schools are needed to support learning. Now it might be helpful to mention children, I think, or students somewhere in the sentence, because those are the people actually being talked about as benefiting from education in that sentence. So we could state the whole sentence more plainly like this, good schools are needed to support children's learning. Now on the Plain English Campaign's website, the solution offered turns the sentence around a bit to say children need good schools if they're to learn properly. Now either way, you can now understand why the original sentence took us so long to comprehend. Just imagine having to read sentence after sentence laden with this type of bureaucratic language. It really wouldn't be that pleasant of an experience, would it? So whenever you come across sentences that aren't plain, immediately start deconstructing them to see, first of all, if there's a substantial point actually being made in all that bureaucratic language. And if there is, then go on to try and simplify it into the plainest language possible without making it sound perhaps too colloquial or slangy.

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Contents

• 1. The World of Elite Writing 1. The World of Elite Writing
  • Welcome 5m 2s
  • Tools, not rules 3m 25s
  • Proof the secret sauce works 3m 3s
• 2. Mindset of an Elite Writer 2. Mindset of an Elite Writer
  • Mindset principle: Write with integrity 3m 47s
  • (Locked) Mindset principle: Yearn to connect 3m 40s
  • (Locked) Mindset principle: Know your intent 6m 55s
  • (Locked) Mindset principle: Aspire for beauty 4m 27s
  • (Locked) Mindset principle: Balance the ingredients like an artist 4m 54s
  • (Locked) Mindset principle: Don't be obsessed with perfection 3m 15s
• 3. Simplicity 3. Simplicity
  • (Locked) The beauty of simplicity 1m 29s
  • Fancy, flowery, and official language 6m 16s
  • (Locked) Fancy, flowery, and official language: Exercises 2m 24s
  • (Locked) Economical ("tight") writing 1m 43s
  • (Locked) Economical ("tight") writing: Exercises 5m 53s
  • (Locked) Redundant words 51s
  • (Locked) Redundant words: Exercises 1m 37s
  • (Locked) More implied words 57s
  • More implied words: Exercises 1m 34s
  • (Locked) Long words 3m 3s
  • (Locked) Long words: Exercises 4m 56s
  • (Locked) Careless repetition 3m 31s
  • (Locked) Careless repetition: Exercises 8m 21s
  • (Locked) Rambling (saying too much) 4m 48s
  • (Locked) Double negatives 3m 36s
  • (Locked) Multiply entities 2m 47s
  • (Locked) Overstretching thoughts 9m 51s
  • (Locked) Unnecessary ceremony 2m 53s
  • (Locked) Unnecessary ceremony: Exercises 3m 39s
  • (Locked) Excessive punctuation 4m 33s
• 4. Clarity 4. Clarity
  • (Locked) The beauty of clarity 3m 47s
  • (Locked) Fuzzy thinking 5m 44s
  • (Locked) Missing links 7m 53s
  • Out-of-focus ideas 6m 52s
  • (Locked) Misplaced modifiers 5m 16s
  • (Locked) Ambiguity 2m 14s
  • (Locked) Ambiguity: Exercises 4m 36s
  • (Locked) Careless comparisons 4m 24s
  • (Locked) Clumsy contrasts 3m
  • (Locked) Dubious distinctions 1m 51s
  • (Locked) Curly writing 4m 43s
  • (Locked) Jargon and buzzwords 4m 45s
  • Mixed tenses 3m 41s
  • (Locked) It versus they 2m 45s
  • (Locked) This, that, and the 7m 39s
  • (Locked) Remove clutter 2m 59s
• 5. Elegance 5. Elegance
  • (Locked) The beauty of elegance 3m 27s
  • Presentational elegance or "house style" 7m 22s
  • (Locked) Narrative elegance 5m 42s
  • (Locked) Narrative elegance: Exercises 2m 36s
  • (Locked) Stray thoughts 3m 53s
  • (Locked) Elegant paragraphs 4m 59s
  • (Locked) Elegant paragraphs: Exercises 1m 58s
  • (Locked) Timing, rhythm, and musicality 4m 5s
  • (Locked) Timing, rhythm, and musicality: Exercises 2m 33s
  • (Locked) Elegant transitions 4m
  • (Locked) Parallel ideas 3m 3s
  • (Locked) Parallel ideas: Exercises 1m 27s
  • (Locked) Word echoes 5m 56s
• 6. Evocativeness 6. Evocativeness
  • (Locked) The beauty of evocativeness 7m 21s
  • (Locked) Create variety 4m 58s
  • Create variety: Exercises 4m 10s
  • (Locked) Add freshness 3m 47s
  • (Locked) Dramatic and forceful writing 4m 16s
  • (Locked) Dramatic and forceful writing: Exercises 4m 16s
  • (Locked) Arouse the senses 8m 55s
  • (Locked) Reversing into sentences: Part 1 5m 15s
  • (Locked) Reversing into sentences: Part 2 1m 28s
  • (Locked) Passive sentences 4m
  • (Locked) Passive sentences: Exercises 5m 43s
  • (Locked) Voice, tone, and character 5m 32s
  • (Locked) Voice, tone, and character: Exercises 6m 46s
• Conclusion Conclusion
  • (Locked) Summary 6m 15s

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