Updated: Aug 26, 2022
UPDATED 8/26/22
My parochial school writing education placed an emphasis on understanding grammar at a depth unheard of today. I had to do this thing called diagramming. The mere mention of diagramming might fill some of you with dread and loathing. But not me. I loved diagramming. The longer and more complex the sentence, the better. I loved doing a sentence diagram on the classroom blackboard that covered the whole darn board, top to bottom. Left to right. What bliss. Something like this:
Somewhere along the way, I also became a dandy writer. Not a brilliant writer, mind you, but a solid, competent technician of the process.
Way back, somewhere in my English education, I was taught three simple rules for constructing an essay, report, or any form of nonfiction writing. Three rules so simple and elementary-sounding I should be embarrassed to share them. But I’m not, because I still use these rules today in my own writing and I apply them when I’m editing a piece of nonfiction. These rules (for the organization and presentation of material) will change your life. Are you curious? Get ready. Here they are:
Simple to complex
Known to unknown
General to specific
I bet you’re disappointed, aren’t you? You thought it would be something profound borrowed from the Buddha or Lao Tzu or Ben Franklin or Buddy Holly. No.
UPDATE: Since first writing this in 2019, I have found a funny twist to the above statement. Ben Franklin did, in fact, say something that totally reinforces the point of this article. I read it in a book about writing with clarity but I believe it is from Franklin's autobiography:
If he would inform, he must advance regularly from things know to things unknown, distinctly without confusion, and the lower he begins the better. It is a common fault in writers to allow their readers too much knowledge: They begin with that which should be the middle, and skipping backwards and forwards, ‘tis impossible for any one but he who is perfect in the subject before to understand their work, and such a one has no occasion to read it.
These three rules of composition are so deeply embedded in my brain, I have no memory of when or from whom I learned them. At some point further on in my education, a fourth, more sophisticated rule was added:
4. Concrete to abstract
Well, now here I am in the 21st Century and with the help of the internet, I Googled the first three rules. To my surprise I found them discussed as “maxims of teaching.” Simple to complex and known to unknown are still popular, but general to specific seems to have given way to particular to general, which, frankly, makes no sense to me.
A teacher should always proceed from particular to general statements, I read. General facts, principles and ideas are difficult to understand and hence the teacher should always first present particular things and then lead to general things.
This sounds an awful lot like known to unknown to me. Or maybe my version of the rules is too ingrained for me to be objective. In any event, I was pleasantly surprised to see these rules still in use, regardless of the exact wording.
The purpose of these well-worn rules is to create a piece of writing that builds your material by starting on familiar ground and slowly slipping in new, more complex ideas. The rules, properly applied, will prevent repetition and redundancy, a frequent criticism of a younger generation of writers.
If you structure your writing following the first three rules, you will find it difficult to be repetitive. You must make a point as clearly and concisely as possible and, with that done, move on to the next point or to a higher level of detail. To present material simply, your words and sentences should be as simple as is appropriate to your intended audience. To lay out your points clearly, use short, precise sentences.
The point of anything you write is to communicate. If your writing fails to communicate your desired message or fails to engage your intended audience, you’ve missed the mark. As a career technical writer of computer instruction manuals, the rule of thumb was, better to talk beneath the readers and get the point across than talk over their heads and fail to inform them. In short, better to shoot too low than too high.
Sometimes writers feel a need to show off in their writing. They end up sounding slick and Ivy League-ish. Feel free to do that if you are more interested in pumping up your ego than communicating with your readers. The fact is—and maybe it’s a sad fact—the reading grade level that is considered most desirable for the general public is Grade 8. But you can communicate more than you might think at an eighth-grade level. The reading grade level of this article is 7.7.
Updated: Apr 1, 2022
Few issues in the world of publishing are more controversial right now than that of sensitivity readers. On the off chance you are not familiar with what a sensitivity reader (SR) does, this is a person hired by a writer, editor, or publisher to review a manuscript to make certain there is no language, character portrayals, and situations that are offensive to any group or population.
Dhonielle Clayton is the chief operating officer of We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit founded in 2014 to support writers from marginalized groups and to advocate for more diversity in publishing. The way she sees it, the job of a sensitivity reader is first and foremost to improve the literary quality of a book by steering the author away from one-dimensional portraits and clichés.
Think of an SR as a type of fact checker. Instead of fact checking numbers, quotes, foreign language words, geographic descriptions, and so on, SRs are fact checking race, religion, gender, culture, disease, or mental illness. On the surface, this sounds good for everyone, right? No author wants to offend a reader or worse, yet, an entire category of readers. Then why is the use of sensitivity readers such a sore spot for so many writers and an ongoing stumbling block for publishing houses?
Writers vs. Editors
I conducted my own survey of sorts about people’s perception of the use of SRs and it’s as unscientific as a survey can be. I asked the members of a particular closed group of writers on social media their opinion of the use of SRs and I asked the same question of the members of a closed group of editors on social media. (See, I told you it was unscientific.)
Overwhelmingly, the writers (many of whom have little or no professional writing experience) were vehemently opposed to the use of SRs. Since it was the first time some of them had ever even heard of an SR, they were appalled at the thought of their work being “censored.” Again, noting that many who responded to my question are young and/or unpublished, their attitude was “no one’s gonna tell me what I can and can’t write.”
Ah, I love the smell of naiveté in the morning.
Conversely, those in the professional editors’ group were unanimously supportive of the use of SRs. I attribute this to two factors. First, these folks all understood the validity of using SRs and some had already worked on projects that employed them. Second, as editors, they are dedicated to the highest quality of writing possible, especially if they are identified with it in a professional capacity.
Is This Really Censorship?
The reaction of so many of the newbie writers in that Facebook group is indicative of the larger public relations problem sensitivity readers have.
The work they do has become synonymous with censorship in its most unsophisticated form—a knee-jerk reaction to any word, expression, or characterization that is insulting to the one person who is reading as a representative of an entire group or type of people.
In December 2017, the New York Times ran an article titled “In an Era of Online Outrage, Do Sensitivity Readers Result in Better Books, or Censorship?” The author, Alex Alter, highlighted a few of the most egregious examples of publishers scuttling books following concerns expressed by sensitivity readers, making it appear as though SRs have a stranglehold on publishers.
Censorship, which takes many forms, means the suppression or prohibition of something. So, let’s be clear, sensitivity readers have no power to censor.
No SR has the ability to say, “You are not allowed to describe a bi-sexual woman this way, so change it.” Or “A man of this race would never say this, so delete it.” Ultimately, the choice to leave the prose as is, delete it, or edit it is left to authors, editors, and publishers.
Diverse Authors
But Dhonielle Clayton and others in the publishing world have rightly pinpointed the real problem at the heart of this argument—the lack of diversity among authors and works chosen by publishers. As Clayton points out, “Publishing has a diversity problem.” According to Madison Schultz in her article “What Is a Sensitivity Reader, and Why Do You Need One?”
…31 percent of children’s books published in 2017 were about non-White characters, but only 7 percent of the children’s books published in 2017 were written by Black, Latinx, or Native American authors.
Publishers know that the general public, especially where the children’s market is concerned, is clamoring for books that feature diverse characters and storylines. But those same publishers either can’t find diverse authors or are reluctant to offer publishing deals to diverse authors.
This is not to say that a writer should never write outside his or her areas of personal experience. No one is saying that, including SRs. But trained sensitivity readers—and yes, there are academic programs for sensitivity reading—help authors create believable, deep characters and genuine storylines that make for better books. While SRs are a step in the right direction, finding, promoting, and supporting diverse authors should be a priority of the traditional publishing houses.
In addition to working as a nonfiction and creative nonfiction editor and writing coach, I am co-author, with Dr. Terri Lyon, of the book Make a Difference with Mental Health Activism: No activism degree required—use your unique skills to change the world. Visit my website page Make a Difference and Dr. Lyon’s activism website Life At The Intersection to learn more about Make a Difference, including how to place bulk orders.
This is the second in a series of blog articles about issues concerning mental illness and mental health care. This article was originally posted on the website Life At The Intersection.
