This is not a writing manual, nor a guide to grammar, nor
to rhetoric. Obviously not: look at its length, or lack of it.
It is only a small book aiming to help you form ideas about
writing, and to write whenever you want to. Writing need
not be an ordeal nor an impossible feat. It is a do-able
task: one that becomes a pleasure when you get into it.
Reading this book should make writing easier, and
should keep you from breaking your head in attempts on
the impossible. But I don't guarantee masterpieces. In
fact, I don't mean to deal with creative writing. How could
one ever generalize about the ways of creative writers?
Their methods are individual to a fault: some pursue total
spontaneity; some mull over poems for months and then
write them in a day; while Georges Simenon wrote within
the same timetable as his story. This book merely tells
how to write to a deadline, without fuss, pieces like
reports, essays, term papers, or theses, with a more or less
predetermined size. Some of this may be of interest to
poets, novelists, and those who would like to be one or the
other; but that is purely coincidental.
Writing an assignment to a deadline may seem simple
enough. But forty years' reading of students' papers of
various sorts, in both the UK and the USA, has taught me
P R E FA C E
otherwise. Some papers were cobbled together without
discernible signs of planning, and obviously written at the
last moment. Others were out of scale, or dealt with only
part of the assigned topic. A few were missing altogether
('I just couldn't get started'): the non-writer had waited
for inspiration that never came. Yet this was not always
due to laziness or lack of motivation. On the contrary,
some students had done far too much preparatory read-
ing (as one could tell from their opening paragraphs of
agonized methodological wrestling) or had over-revised
and prematurely polished a faulty argument. I infer there
is a place for some such book as this. Indeed, it arose out
of lectures that were repeated by request.
Why do so many people-not only students-have
problems with writing? The historical reasons can be
brie?y given. Until the early nineteenth century, educated
people could apparently write whenever they wanted to,
by using one rhetorical method or another. But then,
formal rhetoric became perhaps too rule-bound. In any
case it was rejected-to be replaced by expressive writing.
People began to wait for inspiration: for over?ows of
powerful feeling which sometimes moved them to write
but often didn't. There is no going back to the old rhetoric.
It depended on arts of memory and on a knowledge of the
classics now beyond recovery. Instead, we need a different,
more informal rhetoric: one based on a modern grammar
closer to speech yet with the exactness and nuances of
written language. And we need a method of writing such
as will allow for precise distinctions, when these are
appropriate, as well as for easy serendipities-'I don't
know what I mean to say until I say it.'
vi
P R E FA C E
We have been through a phase of education when gram-
mar was ignored and writing thought possible without
it: a phase when spelling, and therefore distinction
between words, was neglected; when it was thought 'too
discouraging' for a teacher to correct errors. Some people
feel deprived by this, and want to catch up. This book is
meant partly for them.
I shall say little about style, because for ordinary writers
image is not everything-is in fact, compared to function,
very little. The focus will be on how to make words
work. Robert Lanham claims that 'America is the only
country in the world rich enough to have the leisure, and
democracy enough to have the inclination, to teach its
whole citizenry not merely to write, but to write well.' In
my view, no country can afford not to do this, for the sake
of simple ef?ciency, let alone the quality of life.
The chapters that follow need not be read in any one
sequence. It's all right to jump ahead to what seems
more interesting, or back to what you passed over at
?rst. Readers' needs are so various that a mosaic struc-
ture seemed best. With this in mind, I have supplied
an index and have sometimes given cross-references (in
small capitals) to other chapters.
Writing manuals are usually designed for a speci?c
readership. But this is a book for several sorts of reader,
from beginners to senior citizens: all those, indeed, who
sometimes have to write but ?nd it dif?cult. Inevitably,
then, some of the book will not be right for you. If you ?nd
a section irrelevant to your needs, too easy or obscure,
simply move on. Use the Index, or browse: you may ?nd
another section that speaks to you. To save time, the book
P R E FA C E
vii
is bluntly phrased. But I don't mean to be unnecessarily
prescriptive: there are many different ways of writing, and
if the way I suggest provokes you to practise its opposite,
that's ?ne: I shall have succeeded in getting you going.
More people than I can remember have helped me write
this: all my teachers, for a start, and my tutors (not least C.
S. Lewis); then, my colleagues, and all the pupils who have
ever written essays for me. I'm glad to acknowledge the
help of Sophie Goldsworthy with the initial planning of
the book, and the contributions of those who troubled to
read chapters in draft and explain some of the blunders:
Christopher Busby, Anne Coldiron, Paul Cheshire, Robert
Cummings, Neville Davies, David vander Meulen, my son
David S. Fowler, and the readers for the Press. Above all, I
thank my wife, who put up with my preoccupation, as well
as combing newspapers for good (bad) examples of how
not to write.
A.F.
Edinburgh
2006
viii P R E FA C E
Contents
1. Pen and Computer
2. Material Reading
3. Beginning
4. Drafts
5. Outlines
6. Paragraphs
7. Paragraph Types
8. Arguments
9. Signposts
10. Sentences
11. Word Order
12. Punctuation
13. Quotation
14. Originality
15. Readers
16. Words
17. Metaphors
18. Performance and
Concurrence
19. Revising
11
18
25
32
41
49
56
62
75
82
93
101
107
116
123
129
136
CONTENTS
ix
20. Correctness
21. Reducing
22. Research: Hard and Soft
23. Reference Books
24. Practicalities
25. Recapitulation
