Q&A: Writing Style
Writing Style
Question
Could you please write a guidance column about writing and presenting arguments? I’m not talking about flowery language, but about ways to sharpen one’s writing.
Answer
It’s hard for me to do that. You need to build an orderly framework and distill from it the main principles. I also don’t think there is only one correct way to do it. The right way to learn things like this, which are more of an art than a science or logic, is through practice: to read a lot, write, and get feedback.
In the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the protagonist (Phaedrus), who is a rhetoric lecturer, wonders how the quality of an essay is defined, and does not find a clear answer. There are things that are hard to define exhaustively. There are many things that are worth doing, and many others that are not, but I don’t see a simple way to write a guidance column about it.