1. Avoid cliches like the plague: You can’t omit them altogether — and you shouldn’t try — but take care when recasting a tired word or phrase into something fresh and new. When calling attention to hypocrisy, instead of reciting the cliche “This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black,” you could write, “Keywords: pot, kettle, black.” You can also play with words, referring to an especially distraught drama queen as a trauma queen.

2. Avoid filler phrases: Delete content-free wording like “be that as it may,” “to all intents and purposes,” and “in the final analysis.” These prolix protrusions pop up naturally in speech to bridge a gap between one thought and the next, but although you’re forgiven for including them in a first draft, there’s no excuse for letting them pass inspection when you review your writing or edit someone else’s.

3. Avoid verbosity: Watch for wordy phrases like “in order to,” unnecessary words and phrases like currently and “that is,” and smothered verbs (constructions in which a noun can be transformed into a verb, such as “offered an indication” when indicate will do.)

4. Avoid redundancies and repetition and saying the same thing twice: Take care to avoid doppleganger words in stock phrases — common, like filler phrases, to spoken language but inimical to good writing — like “actual fact” and “completely finished.”

5. Avoid repetitive sentence structure: Craft your prose in such a way that phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs flow smoothly (avoid a Dick-and-Jane style of writing reminiscent of text in primary-grade reading books) — and consider the visual impact of your writing.

1. Always Use Serial Commas

The policy of preceding every item in a list but the last one with a comma is commonsensical (read a previous article about the serial comma). Confusion is possible when you don’t and highly unlikely when you do. What if, using a non-serial-comma style, you write about more than two things when one of the things consists of more than one part or ingredient? (“The choices are roast beef, turkey, and ham and cheese.”) Do you insert a serial comma for clarity (and introduce an inconsistency) or leave the sentence as is for readers to stumble on? Adherence to serial-comma style eliminates the dilemma.

2. Minimize Capitalization

Job titles are capitalized only before names. Names of academic majors aren’t capitalized unless they are already proper nouns, like names of languages (“English”) or references to regions (“Asian studies”). Generic names of entities (“the hospital,” “the organization,” and so on) are lowercased. Yes, capitalization is a minefield; when in doubt, look it up, and search on this site for “capitalization” for many articles on the topic (including this one).

3. Repair Comma Splices

A comma alone cannot separate two independent clauses in a sentence. Break the clauses into distinct sentences, or separate them with a semicolon or an em dash — or a comma and a conjunction (and, or, and so on) — but not with a comma alone. For more information on this topic read 5 Ways to Fix the Comma Splice.

4. Omit Extraneous Hyphens, and Insert Necessary Ones

“Decision making,” “problem solving,” and similar compound nouns require no hyphen, unless they precede a noun as a compound modifier (“decision-making procedure,” “problem-solving aptitude”). “Near collision” and other similar constructions don’t, either, with the same exception (“near-collision statistics”). Established compound modifiers usually don’t require a hyphen even before a noun (“high school student”). Confused? Here’s a simple rule: Look it up. (And check out this DailyWritingTips article and find others on the topic by searching on the site for “hyphens.”)

5. Limit Displays of Emphasis

Words can be italicized to indicate that they are being used to refer to themselves, not the things they stand for (“Note the word emphasis”), or to signal a foreign term (“Wunderbar” means “wonderful”), or to make sure the reader understands that something is really important. Words can be initial-capped to indicate irony or other humorous intent. (“The rent-a-cop exuded the air of an Authority Figure.”) Boldface is appropriate for introducing new vocabulary or otherwise calling attention to an unfamiliar term but is best limited to textbooks and guidebooks. But all-caps are invariably excessive, “scare quotes” are seldom necessary, and be judicious about otherwise calling attention to words and phrases. You can read a previous article on this post titled How to Add Emphasis to Your Writing.

Here are five areas in which plain English is, fortunately, making inroads:

Business

Remember when you saw a delivery truck or a repair van and could tell which products or services it carried or facilitated? That’s still often the case, especially with known brands, but how many times have you read text printed on such a vehicle and scratched your head, wondering, “What business is that business in?”

Freight companies used to do “trucking,” then they provided “delivery solutions”; now, they’re all about “logistics.” But they’re still in the business of moving things from point A to point B. Many vehicles, however, especially those in the fleets of high-tech companies, either don’t offer any information other than the company name and a phone number (and perhaps a URL), or the van is labeled with meaningless phrases about “solutions” and “logistics.” Don’t these companies want potential customers and clients to know what they offer?

Stationary corporate communications, including Web site copy, press releases, and mission statements, frequently fail to enlighten the target audience as well. Some companies, though, make an effort to deliver their messages with simple, straightforward language.

Government

Federal, state, and local government agencies have long been notorious for obfuscating official documents: In their efforts to project an air of authority (in more than one sense of the word), many government employees have produced reams of often impenetrable prose. Fortunately, the federal Plain Writing Act and two subsequent executive orders require government-issued publications to be written in simple, easy-to-understand English.

Law

It’s a cynical sentiment that the notorious density of legal documents is calculated to perpetuate the need for lawyers, but it’s hard to avoid feeling that way when confronted with an oxymoronically named brief or a contract that’s anything but contracted. Some attorneys will argue that legal writing requires precision and specificity of language, but that is a poor defense of gratuitously complex language employed when the supposed intent is to make the subject matter as transparent as possible. Many lawyers, however, now opt to write in simple sentences and avoid legal jargon.

Law Enforcement

You’ve seen it time and time again: The chief of police, or a spokesperson, drones on about how an investigation was carried out or how a crisis is being handled. Attempting to appear official and in control of the situation, the speaker overwhelms listeners with jarring jargon and multisyllabic meanderings. Police reports, similarly, often stiffly, obscurely relate simple sequences of events in a style that complicates rather than communicates. Now, fortunately, law enforcement agencies are turning to resources like the handbook Plain English for Cops to help personnel write simple, clear accounts.

Academia and Scholarship

Many academics, including those who write for popular audiences, write clearly and well, but just as many more seem to try to outdo their colleagues in trying to write journal articles and other scholarly documents in a style as bafflingly complicated and convoluted as possible — and in doing so, are poor role models for younger professors, graduate assistants, and other students who read their research. As with other authority figures, researchers in the natural sciences and the social sciences alike often seem to below that dense prose enhances their expertise.

Rationales for Rational Writing

Bryan Garner, the dean of clear writing (and author of the authoritative yet coherent guidebook Garner’s Modern American Usage), offers these four motivations for writers to favor simple writing:

1. Writers of complex prose risk confusing themselves as well as others.

2. Reading complex prose is more time-consuming than reading plain English.

3. Writing plain English is hard work, and thus, if writers feel that they must labor to succeed in their efforts, clear writing is a well-earned achievement.

4. Clarity is the primary goal of writing.

Again, these arguments should not discourage eloquence, and I admit that I sometimes indulge in overwrought writing (usually, for I hope is humorous effect). But join me in trying these tips:

1. Ask yourself whether curt, clear Anglo-Saxon vocabulary might be more suitable than Latinate language in any given passage.

2. Don’t avoid subordinate clauses or parenthetical phrases, but keep them to a minimum, and keep each one succinct.

3. Monitor your musings for redundancy and other enemies of conciseness.

4. Consider your audience when determining the degree of formality you will adopt in a given piece of writing.

5. Be cautious about incorporating jargon.

1. “So-called ‘notification laws’ require businesses to notify customers when certain unencrypted customer data is improperly accessed.”

2. “Thus the question is not one of quality, but of quantity.”

3. “I suppose this was the moment when I was supposed to experience a sensation of ‘being one with the universe,’ but I just wasn’t feeling it.”

4. “With a strident vigor that arrested the attention of all present, she shouted, ‘YOU JUST DON’T GET IT, DO YOU?’”

5. “After seeing this movie, I just have one thing to say: ‘I want those two hours of my life back!!!’”

Answers

1. “So-called notification laws require businesses to notify customers when certain unencrypted customer data is improperly accessed.”

Explanation: Quotation marks employed to highlight a word or phrase, known as scare quotes, are almost invariably unnecessary, and are redundant to the phrase so-called. (Note that in the previous sentence, I didn’t enclose the introduced slang term “scare quotes” — as I explained, these quotation marks are superfluous. However, I did use quotation marks around the phrase in this parenthesis, just as I italicized so-called above — and here — because that’s how open phrases and words or hyphenated phrases, respectively, are styled when used as names of concepts rather than as the concepts themselves.)

2. “Thus the question is not one of quality, but of quantity.”

Explanation: Italicization of key words can be appropriate but is often overused. Use your judgment to determine whether your point needs such emphasis or whether you can rely on readers to get it without special treatment of words. Usually, they will, and if you doubt it, perhaps your point needs to be expressed more clearly.

3. “I suppose this was the moment when I was supposed to experience a sensation of Being One with the Universe, but I just wasn’t feeling it.”

Explanation: Using quotation marks in this case isn’t necessarily the wrong approach, and it’s appropriate if someone — a guru, for instance — previously used these words, but if the intent is mockery, sarcasm, or irony, it may not be effective. Using headline-style initial capital letters is the conventional approach for conveying such a tone.

4. “With a strident vigor that arrested the attention of all present, she shouted, ‘You just don’t get it, do you!’”

Explanation: Except in display copy (headlines, headings, and the like), using all capital letters is an awkward distraction. Let the narrative carry the emphasis; note that in the sample sentence, thanks to the expressive description in the introductory phrase, the quotation could even get by with a question mark alone (though, because it’s a rhetorical question, the exclamation point is suitable).

5. “After seeing this movie, I just have one thing to say: ‘I want those two hours of my life back.’”

Explanation: Again, let the narrative do the work. Multiple exclamation points have no place in writing, except to mimic a hormone-addled adolescent. And avoid even single exclamation points; usually, they’re extraneous, and if they’re not, they’re probably a crutch for inexpressive writing. Isn’t the deadpan tone implied by the lack of an exclamation point in the sample sentence above more effective than the impotent peevishness that an exclamation point would suggest?

Fiction

Novels that purport to reflect real life must include profanity if the life they reflect includes use of profanity. This is difficult to accept for many people of a certain age, dismayed by the ubiquity of swearwords in modern literature, who have the disadvantage of having grown up during an era when books and movies were censored. (But let’s get real: In the Old West, cantankerous cowboys did not refer to each other as “You no-good so-and-so,” and in combat, to paraphrase a well-known expression, there are no decorous speakers in foxholes.) Popular entertainment often admittedly goes overboard in drenching dialogue in profanity, but that is merely an exaggeration, not a fabrication, of reality.

If you’re going to write novels or short stories, it seems that to be honest with yourself and your readers, if a story takes place in a milieu in which profanity is uttered, at least some of your characters are going to be swearing. If, however, the setting does not lend itself to cursing, it’s not an issue.

Nonfiction

Over the past couple of years, several nonfiction books with asterisk-laden titles have appeared, including Sh*t My Dad Says, a compendium of quotations from the author’s foul-mouthed father; the self-explanatory A**holes Finish First and The Complete A**hole’s Guide to Handling Chicks; the bedtime-book parody Go the F**k to Sleep; and the latest example, the trivia compendium The Little Book of Big F*#k Ups: 220 of History’s Most Regrettable Moments. These books were preceded some years ago by the memoir Another Bull**** Night in Suck City, which is being adapted into a film starring Robert DeNiro. (The movie version, apparently, is titled Welcome to Suck City.)

Our society is not yet ready for uncensored book covers (or movie titles), but the pages between are accessible only to those who choose to access them, whether in a bookstore or a library (or someone’s home), so outcries of outrage are pointless. Few book publishers would permit profanity in books targeted to minors, but you might argue that children can thumb through such books in the adult-trade shelves. If, while doing so, they see swear words they don’t already know (whether they use them or not), what damage, exactly, has been done? Explicit sex and violence are a much greater concern than naughty words.

Again, if you choose to write — in this case, nonfiction — and if swearing is appropriate to your presentation, cuss away. If it isn’t, the question is irrelevant.

Journalism and Online Publications

Does profanity have a place in journalism? Mainstream print publications, and their online versions, so as to avoid alienating subscribers and advertisers, are unlikely to reproduce quoted profanity or allow it in the narrative. If it is necessary to report that a profane or obscene word was uttered or was printed elsewhere, the publication will either disguise the word with asterisks or other marks, or paraphrase it.

Publications that cater to certain demographics, however, tend to allow foul language for dramatic or comic effect. You can protest that such usage is gratuitous or excessive, but that means the publication is not appropriate for you, not that it’s inappropriate.

Newspapers and magazines, whether read on paper or on screen, are commercial products, and editors will determine what constitutes acceptable content in the context of the market. Publishers of niche publications, and of self-published materials such as blogs, are entitled to decide for themselves.

Degrees of Profanity

Ultimately, the question any purveyor of prose must answer is, where do you draw the line? Certain four-letter words are either acceptable or anathema. But what about minor league profanity: hell, damn, and the like? If you prohibit these words in your publication, what about heck, darn, and gosh, which are all merely disguised forms of literally profane profanity? What about effing or bleep? Everyone knows what each means or could mean. Why permit euphemisms or evasive explications? Don’t you risk offending readers or site visitors who resent such coy conjurings intended to wink-and-nudge them about what you might otherwise have explicitly stated?

The more significant connotation of that question is, why choose profanity over no profanity? Using profane and obscene words certainly communicates passion, but are you taking the low road, the easy way out, by dropping f-bombs instead of raising eloquent arguments? Are you debasing language, and culture, by pandering to provocation?

I’m not advocating or attacking profanity. I swear on occasion, and not just when I hit my thumb with a hammer. I believe that use of profanity in speech or writing can be both a rich source of humor and effective as an emphatic rhetorical device. But it doesn’t matter what I think. For both producers and consumers of content, it is an individual issue: Either you accept it, or you don’t.