For example, I was dismayed to find that in some of my recent articles I used several phrases that he considers hackneyed. For that I offer my apologies to you, promises to do better, and thanks to him.
More than half a century ago I started writing for print. I still have my first by-lined article, “Beaumont Edges Banning 6 to 5” in the March 16, 1951, issue of The Banning Record, the weekly newspaper in the small California town where I grew up on the edge of the Colorado Desert.
I always loved to write, but I never was any good at it until I read a book that has influenced my writing style to this day. The writer who influenced me the most seems almost forgotten now. But I still clearly remember how much that one book changed the way I write.
In those days I was an editor and feature writer for a business magazine. I started there in 1980 and left in 1999, when I began to write entirely about diabetes. Somewhere about half way through my tenure at that magazine I read a book by Rudolph Flesch.
Now, I’m not even sure which one of his many books it was that hit me so hard. But it was probably The Art of Readable Writing. That book is apparently out of print, and I don’t have a copy of it.
But I still try as hard as I can to follow what I learned there. The main point is to keep my writing as clear and as simple as possible, no matter how complex the subject matter.
The other style rules are few – short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs. Active voice. Few adjectives. Colloquial style.
Two more books influence the way I write. A huge influence on my writing is William E. Blundell’s The Art and Craft of Feature Writing (New York: New American Library, 1988). I know of no better guide to structuring an article than this book, which has guided feature writing at The Wall Street Journal for years.
For the basics of good writing there is still nothing to compare with the old classic that people call Strunk and White. Formally, it’s William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style (New York, The Penguin Press, 2005) and many other editions.
I read the best writing I can find. These are my day-to-day mentors. The best newspapers –The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The best magazine – The New Yorker, which has many of the best writers in the English language. They include Atul Gawande, the best medical writer now practicing his craft. He is also a surgeon and Harvard Medical School professor.
Other great New Yorker writers, whose articles and books I make sure to read, are Malcolm Gladwell and John McPhee. More favorite writers are Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David McCullough, Michal Pollan and Tom Wolfe.
