4892
c.2
United States
Environmental Protection
401 M Street, SW
Washington, D.C. 2046C
OOOR80109
Be a Better Writer
A Manual for
EPA Employees
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Be a Better Writer
United States
Environmental Protection Agency
March 1980
U.-li Environmental Protection
>T 5, Library (PL-12J)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD v
PREFACE vi
I. BE A BETTER WRITER 1
Why Be a Better Writer? 1
How to Start 2
Writing at EPA 3
II. BE ORGANIZED 4
Organize-1: Do It 4
Organize 2: How to Do It 5
Organize-3: Do It Again 10
III. BE CLEAR 12
Use the Active Voice 12
Write with More Verbs 15
Use "Little" Words 17
IV. BE TASTEFUL 20
Conundrums of Gender 20
Hobgoblins of Style 22
Tasteless Jargon 25
V. BE CAREFUL 29
Techniques for Editing Your Own Material 29
Hints for Proofreading 34
APPENDIX: OTHER RESOURCES 35
in
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FOREWORD
If there is one thing I have learned during my
government service, it is the importance of good
writing. Writing effectively is crucial to our effort to
serve the public and to protect the environment. It is
essential if we are to be fair and reasonable with those
we regulate. It is the best way to improve communi-
cation among different parts of our own organization.
"Be a Better Writer" is a major step toward meeting
the President's and our own goals for better communi-
cation. It contains example after example of EPA
writing. I think you will find it a practical guide for
breaking bad habits and developing new writing skills.
I urge you to read this book and refer to it often.
You will learn a worthwhile approach; your readers
will thank you.
Douglas Costle
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PREFACE
The President of the United States has told Govern-
ment writers to pay attention to their writing. In
March, 1978, he issued Executive Order 12044,
directed at improving Government regulations:
As President of the United States of America, 1
direct each Executive Agency to adopt procedures
to improve existing and future regulations. . .
Regulations should be as simple and clear as
possible. ..
The head of each agency or the designated official
with statutory responsibility. . .should determine
that. . .the regulation is written in plain English
and is understandable to those who must comply
with it.
President Carter stressed plain English for regulations,
but we hope that this manual will help to make all
Agency writing —memos, reports, even letters— clearer
and more understandable.
There are many style manuals on the market: for
newspaper reporters, short story writers, academic
writers, and on and on. There is nothing, however, for
as special an audience as the people who work for the
United States Environmental Protection Agency. This
manual addresses the problems here at the Agency.
John R. Adams, Ph. D.
Veda Charrow, Ph. D.
Frank B. Phillippi
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BE A BETTER WRITER
Most people at the Environmental Protection
Agency do not clean up the environment with
rakes, or scrubbers, or settling ponds. They use
words. Almost everything you write—a research
paper, an internal memorandum, a response to a
Congressional inquiry, a budget submission, and
most certainly a regulation—in some way
contributes to fighting pollution.
But the very words we use can become
polluted. The Agency has only a few specialists to
deal with "word pollution"; often, the people who
write for the Agency must also clean up the
writing. This manual is dedicated to helping you
with this job.
WHY BE A
BETTER WRITER?
Government writers have a terrible reputation.
Now that members of the public are increasingly
more involved in the workings of government,
they are finding too many examples of writing
they cannot understand. Societies of plain-talking
critics have sprung up; the newspapers gleefully
report examples of incomprehensible prose.
Members of the public typically have four
objections to government writing: it is disorgan-
ized, it is anonymous, it is full of jargon, and it is
unpolished. Those four objections lead to one
conclusion: Government writing is often inef-
fective.
EPA writing runs the risk of being lumped
together with the excesses of our colleagues in
other parts of the Government. The way to avoid that
risk is, of course, for everyone at the Agency to
become a better writer; that is why we have written
this manual.
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How TO START If we had only one instruction for EPA writers,
we would say Be Personal. You can avoid the
criticisms of government writing through such simple
changes as being aware of your audience and adjusting
your style to different readers: people outside the
government, people outside your specialty, or people
within your own office.
Being personal leads to four other principles, which
appear here as separate chapters. The first is a
reminder to organize your material with your reader in
mind. The next principle, Be Clear, examines ways to
help your reader follow what you have written without
being distracted. Be Tasteful includes further guide-
lines to keep the form of what you say from intruding
on the function of your message. Finally, in the last
chapter are guidelines on Being Careful and polishing
what you wrote. An appendix gives helpful sources for
further reading.
All the chapters start with general statements
of policy toward writing. But the chapters do not
stop with broad guidelines. Each one offers ways
to pull yourself outside what you have written
and to concentrate on things you can recognize
independently, even though you wrote them
yourself. Appearing in most of the chapters, for
example, are two types of constructions: the
passive voice, which many cite as the primary
villain in government writing, and derivative
nouns (usually verbs with suffixes, like prepara-
tion instead of prepare). Recognizing these two
constructions is half the battle; the other half is testing
them considering the alternative—to see if there is a
more effective way to say the same thing.
Another suggestion is to work through your
writing more than once. The suggestion applies
especially to organizing (searching for other ways
to present the same facts), to editing, and to
proofreading.
That second trip through what you have
written is crucial. After you have invested your
time, your research, your ideas, and your creative
energies in those words on paper, you have a
personal stake in them. But people do not like to
be told that their words look or sound strange,
even though that is what an editor must do.
Having someone else say, "What does this mean?"
or "Who did that?" or even just a raised-eyebrow
"Huh?" is part of testing how well your writing
does its job. The editor, even if you are the editor,
is the first person to start improving what you have
written.
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WRITING AT EPA Writing for EPA adds another layer of
complexity to this already difficult process. First,
you are often drafting statements of policy or
compiling information that someone else will
sign. You are not free to write what you really
feel or interpret something strictly as you see it.
Instead, you must take someone else's idea or
guidance, merge it with the available data, and
articulate it in the way you think your reviewers
would like to say it. But the more people you deal
with, the more opportunities there are for
misunderstanding, miscommumcation, and error.
You can handle these problems with careful
planning, by knowing your audience, and by
asking the right questions of the person making
the assignment. Supervisors can help with clear,
understandable, specific instructions.
Writing is hard work. Group writing is even
harder. We hope this manual will help by making
you more aware that the Agency's job is to write
more clearly for its audience and to be personal;
we especially hope that the practical suggestions
throughout the manual will help you become a
better writer.
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BE ORGANIZED
Organize, organize, organize!
These three words are all you need to
remember as you start to write. Well-organized
material, arranged in a logical order and
supplying organizational cues—headings and
transitions—lets your readers process the
information you give them more quickly and
understand it more easily.
Those three words also make up a conceptual
flow from first thoughts to first draft: first you
should remember to organize, then you should
check the flow of what you have organized, and
later you should consider other ways to present
the material. Each of the stages is important by
itself, and we treat each independently in the
following sections.
ORGANIZE-I:
Do IT
The time you invest before writing is a capital
investment that will pay dividends later. More
specifically, it can help correct a prevalent
shortcoming in writing at EPA: pulling rabbits
from hats.
Most people can write straight description.
They can say how much it cost to do a study, who
worked on it, what it dealt with, and how they
went about doing it. But those people rarely know
how to organize their Findings, Conclusions, or
Recommendations. What they typically do is plow
through the descriptive part; then in the last page
out comes the rabbit. They jumble their conclu-
sions together with everything that crosses their
minds, giving no attention to parallelism,
balance, or connection with what preceded the
list.
That type of organization strains the reader
and often does not even support the conclusions.
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It also is one reason why some government
reports are so long. When you begin to organize,
you have a chance to start asking yourself what
you will be concluding or recommending and to
incorporate the answers throughout your
document.
The time you spend in Organize-1 can also
help you ask the most important question before
you write: So what? What's the point? Why do you
need to write the document? Getting that answer
clear in your mind is the most profitable exercise
you can go through before you begin writing—and
continue as you refine your outline.
Organi/e-1, even though it calls for two
practical questions (one about anticipating your
conclusions, the other about your point), is still
mainly an exhortation to plan before your write.
Organize-2 and Organize-3 concentrate more on
the mechanics of getting from The Point to paper;
they give you specific hints for practicing what
we preach, preach, preach!
ORGAMZE-2: Almost all technical pieces have an Introduction
How TO Do IT and usually a Conclusion. Those sections put the
rest of what you say in context, tell who did what
and when, give some background, and, for the
Conclusion, reiterate the points you have made
along the way.
Writing introductions is just plain hard, and good
ones usually come only with practice. One practical
improvement is to devote one paragraph to explaining
the ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. Tell your reader what
unifies your material and why you have chosen a par-
ticular order for it. That paragraph, which alerts your
reader to what will come, may be as simple as "We
will discuss the following four topics," or, better, it
will say how the topics relate to each other and to
your main point. It is essentially a summary of what
you did while you organized.
Picture a topic you might be addressing—say, air
pollutants. (Imagine that you are writing a preamble
to a regulation on air pollution.) Most people have
been taught to group their material into categories and
then to display it in an outline:
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INTRODUCTION
SULFUR DIOXIDE
A. Sources
B. Problems
X. Control
111. TOTAL SUSPENDED PARTICUI.ATES
A. Sources
X. Control
X. CONCLUSION
Now try a different way of looking at the outline, so
that the main sections line up along the base of a
triangle:
The Introduction and Conclusion can be shoulders for
the triangle.
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These triangles have the primary advantage of display-
ing related items (here, pollutants) alongside each
other. They also let you see your organization develop;
eventually you can suspend further layers of triangles
from each of the blocks at the base. The most
important advantage of the triangles, however, is that
they allow you to ask piercing organizational
questions.
What unifies the topics? What do the lower boxes
have in common? (In this case, they are all air
pollutants, although there are other ways to view
them.) Fill that classifier in at the top of the triangle:
Are your topics exhaustive? Are there other air
pollutants? You may need to say in your introductory-
paragraph that other items fit the organizing principle
but that you do not intend to discuss them. Occasion-
ally, you might have to revise your organizing
principle to narrow it. For example, it might turn out
that you are really writing about point-source air
pollution, not all kinds of air pollution.
Do they overlap? If your outline contains "TSP" and
"Fugitive Dust" as well, something is awry: fugitive
dust is itself a Total Suspended Particulate. Be careful
not to mix levels of triangles, elevating a subpomt to
the status of major points. This mixture of levels
would be tempting if you were especially interested in
dust (if you were, \ou should use a different organi-
zing principle).
Are they parallel? The sections of your document
should be parallel in two ways. The easier one you can
verify when you review your material, checking to
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make sure your lists and headings have the same
grammatical construction: all gerunds (Improving
EPA 's Monitoring), all infinitives (To Protect Sensitive
Environmental Areas), all imperatives (Reorganize the
Office), all abbreviated sentences (Resources
Inadequate), all questions (How Can We Guarantee
Compliance?), or all nouns (Sulfur Dioxide).
Your organization should be parallel as well.
Something would be wrong if your outline had
II SULFUR DIOXIDE
III. TOTAL SUSPENDED PARTICULATES
IV MONITORING EQUIPMENT
V. NITROGEN OXIDES
Equipment for monitoring may be important, but it
simply does not fit with the other items (kinds of air
pollutants) in the list. You would have two choices for
correcting this lack of parallelism: revise your
organizing principle so that monitoring fits, or else
remove the topic from the outline, inserting it as a
secondary point within some of the topics.
Are your points in the best order? Everything written
has a starting point. From that simple fact follows
another fact: something really is the starting point,
something else follows, and so on. Use your time
during Orgamze-2 to turn these facts to your ad-
vantage. Begin by deciding what principle governs
the order of a list. (Chapters, headings, conclusions,
and even sets of bullets buried deep in your document
are all lists.) Next, ask yourself if another principle
might be more appropriate. Sample principles include
priority, time sequence, location, and cause and effect.
Deciding explicitly on an ordering principle has
another advantage: it helps you remember to include
transitions, the glue connecting your points. These aids
to the reader can be conceptual ("highest priority,
next, next") or concrete ("after finishing step 2, begin
3")- Either type is acceptable; the point is to include
them.
When you have found the organizing principle at
one level (say, chapters), do it again for lower levels.
When you finish, you will have made triangles within
triangles, all the way to the material in individual
paragraphs. The next figure shows a full organization
for a report on air pollutants. The annotations—
organizing principles, transitions—are notes to yourself
on the organizational cues to include.
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KINDS OF
AIR
POLLUTANTS
so2HTSPh- HCI—ico
SOURCE - PROBLEMS'CONTROL
EN-
VIR-
ON-
MEN-
TAL
_
[
EN-
FORCE-
MENT
TECH-
NICAL
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ORGAMZE-3: Anything can be reorganised. So try it. choose a
Do IT AGAIN different organizing principle and different arrange-
ments within your triangles. Then decide \vhat option
will let you present your information most effectively.
No principle will invariably be the best one, what you
should search for is the most useful one for your
specific purpose. The winner will be the one which
answers "So what?" most effectively.
A useful organizing technique, one that often arises
only after you have thought through an entire report,
is to organize by recommendations. An action
memorandum dealing with spills of hazardous
substances, for example, used topics connected with
the recommendations:
• Integrate Information Systems
• Sponsor Training for State Personnel
• Expand Federal Planning
• Request Additional Funding.
The organizing principle was recommendations; the
order was based on priority.
There were several other ways to organize the same
material: to use the actors (private sector, States,
Federal Government) or to use kinds of spills
(classified according to coverage under the Clean
Water Act). Organizing around the recommendations
forced them into the spotlight and, moreover, was
more efficient since it avoided problems with repetition
that arose under other organizing principles.
The primary advantage of organizing by recom-
mendations is that it avoids the rabbit-out-of-the-hat
syndrome. When you use your recommendations or
conclusions as subject headings all along, they will not
suddenly pop up as surprises at the end of your
document.
Consider again the outline for a preamble on air
pollutants. Although something written from that
outline would be useful for conveying information
about specific pollutants, and it might describe how
you gathered that information, it would not be a
success if your job were to identify issues in air
pollution.
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For example, it might turn out that Sulfur Dioxide
and Total Suspended Particulates primarily raise
issues connected with stationary sources, while
Hydrocarbons and Nitrogen Oxides are related to
mobile sources. (Or, again, that Total Suspended
Particulates, Sulfur Dioxide, and Carbon Monoxide
are improving, while Nitrogen Oxides and Hydro-
carbons are the same or worse. Or.. . .) Then test.
(Ask "So what?" Is there something that does not fall
AIR POLLUTION
ISSUES BY
KINDS OF SOURCES
o/ Yo
under your organizational umbrella? Are your lists in
coherent order?) Your outline might look like the next
figure.
There are many ways to outline, and many outlines
could be right for a given application. With practice,
you will be able to choose (during Organize-2 and
Organize-3) the outline that helps you present your
information most effectively. But never forget
Organize-1: the first improvement you can bring to
your writing is to organize and to ask those crucial
questions, "So what?" and "What's the point?"
In brief: Organize, organize, organize!
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BE CLEAR
Writers of technical or legal material frequently know
their subject so well that they fall into a trap: because
they and their colleagues understand what they have
written, they think everyone else can. Not so. The
safest assumption you can make when writing a
regulation, a preamble, a memo, or even a routing slip
is that your readers are ignorant and, given half a
chance, will misunderstand or misinterpret everything
you write. Your audience is not really ignorant, of
course, but it is unfair to assume that they have spent
as much time on your topic as you have.
Obviously, to keep from misleading your readers
you must have empathy—something you don't learn
from books. You can achieve part of that empathy if
you start defining unfamiliar terms and checking to
make sure that you have defined acronyms the first
time they appear. Another part of the empathy will
come if you use clear constructions: if you say what
you mean so clearly that your reader can understand it
the first time.
To be more specific, in the next sections we take up
three easily recognizable but often criticized construc-
tions that can make writing hard to follow. In
particular, Being Clear means using the active voice,
and not the passive; writing with more verbs and fewer
nouns; and using "little" words, which serve as road
signs to keep people from getting lost.
USE THE
ACTIVE VOICE
Sentences like the following are prevalent in EPA
writing:
(1) Credit was given to the company for installing a
pretreatment plant.
Whoever wrote the sentence probably gave the credit
(or at least knew who did), but did the person who
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read the sentence know? That example is in the passive
voice, which, when misused, interferes with clarity by
allowing writers to avoid saying who did what.
Compare active-voice versions of the same sentence:
(2) I gave the company credit for installing a pre-
trfutmpnt rjunt
treatment plant
or
(3) This office gave the company credit for installing a
pretreatment plant.
(Naturally, several other sentences could work,
depending on who actually had given the credit.)
Restoring who did what is not the only reason for
substituting active sentences for passive ones. For
example, which of the following two sentences is
clearer?
(4) Resolution of the problem was accomplished during
a 6-month study.
(5) We resolved the problem during a 6-month study
In this case, the change from passive to active restores
the actor (we); it also avoids clumsy circumlocutions
like resolution was accomplished.
The method for changing passive sentences into
active ones works as follows. Take a typical passive
sentence:
(6) Regulations on this topic will be proposed by EPA
over the next six months.
Three parts of the sentence confirm that it is in the
passive voice. First, there is an -ed word, technically
called a past participle*; here, the word is proposed.
The second mark of the passive is a form of the verb
be (in the example, will be). The third mark is a hy
phrase containing the agent in the sentence; EPA is
the "proposer" in the example.
Passive sentences can be in any tense, including the
past tense. All of the following examples are in the
passive voice:
*Not all past participles end
in -ed Seen, done, and given
are all past participles.
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Regulations were proposed by EPA
Regulations have been proposed by EPA
Regulations arc being proposed by EPA.
All three features (-eel verb, form of be, by phrase)
need not be present for a group of words to be in the
passive voice. The following example is still in the
passive voice, even though it is missing the by phrase:
(7) Regulations on this topic will be proposed in six
months.
Passive constructions can even appear without the
form of be. These constructions, technically called
"phrases," still have the effect of a passive. The next
sentence, for example, has a passive phrase with only
the first mark (the -ed verb), and no form of be or by
phrase:
(8) Regulations proposed before 1979 will help the
Agency avoid litigation.
All of these examples, even those without the actor
in the sentence, are grammatical and may, on
occasion, be an appropriate choice. Nevertheless, you
can easily make them clearer and more direct by
putting them in the active voice. First, supply the actor
if it is missing; if you or your group did something,
say it. You then have a full passive, with the actor
present, instead of a truncated one.
Creating the active version from the full passive is
straightforward. Start the new sentence with what fol-
lowed the by; change the verb to its active form; and
insert the passive's subject as the active's object. So,
from
The regulations will be proposed during the next six
months
first supply the by phrase, using your own knowledge
of who did what:
The regulations will be proposed by EPA during the
next six months
and then create an active version:
EPA will propose the regulations during the next six
months.
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Look through a typical government regulation or
other document some time. See how frequently you
will not be able to tell who should be doing what.
Note also that the style is boring because virtually
every sentence is in the passive voice. The techniques
from this section are one practical way to keep your
writing from being obscure and boring.
WRITE WITH Almost every style manual in print nowadays has a list
MORE VERBS of overworked words: words to avoid. A typical list
looks like this:
DO NOT SAY THIS SAY THIS
give consideration to consider
was in attendance at attended
make provision for provide for
I he lists have something in common. Most of the
offending words (consideration, attendance, provision)
are nouns with a verb inside them (consider, attend,
provide). Those nouns, usually made up of a verb or
adjective with a suffix (-lion, -ance, -al, -ment, -ness),
are technically called "nominals."
For some reason the languages of science and
commerce gravitate toward a noun-filled style,
substituting nouns like those in the list for construc-
tions containing verbs. That kind of excess is common
in Government English as well. Most style manuals
respond to that tendency with a section advising
writers to use action words; that is, they recommend
using verbs in place of constructions containing
nominals.
Aside from increasing the number of syllables,
which already makes written material hard to read, the
nominals can confuse your readers, just as many
passive constructions can. If you had to ask who did
the proposing in this example of the passive voice.
Regulations will be proposed within two weeks,
you certainly would ask the same question of
Regulation proposal will take place within two weeks
Inserting who did what helps a little:
Regulation proposal by this office will take place within
two weeks
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But a better solution gets rid of the nominal (proposal)
entirely, in favor of the verb propose.
This office will propose the regulations within two
weeks
In general, three kinds of constructions are easier to
u nderstand than nominals like proposal or prepara-
tion: a full sentence; a phrase containing the -ing form
of the verb, called a gerund (e.g., preparing); or one
containing the to form, called an infinitive (to
prepare). Not every option is available every time, but
your ear will let you decide which is appropriate.
Thus, in place of
This office started regulation preparation on May 17
consider
This office started preparing the regulation on May 17
(gerund)
or
[his office started to prepare the regulation on May 17
(infinitive).
Similarly, in place of the following example,
Prior to the preparation of the new forms,
substitute a more straightforward beginning word and
write a full sentence form (technically called a clause),
inserting who does what as you go:
Before you prepare the new forms
or use the -ing form:
Before preparing the new forms
These substitutions are surprisingly easy after you
commit yourself to reducing the number of nominals
in your writing. The result? More chances to say who
did what, fewer syllables in a smoother style, and
fewer chances for people to misunderstand what you
wrote.
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USE "LITTLE WORDS" At some point in your training, someone may have
told you to be concise: to pare down the verbiage, to
chop out whole phrases, to remove the flotsam of
useless words. Such an admonition is correct, but
anyone who follows it slavishly is likely to end up
writing information-bearing cargo that cannot be
unloaded.
The pitfall in counting words to determine whether
your writing is clear and concise is that there are two
kinds of words in English: the "big" words that carry
your meaning and the "little" words that stick it
together so that people can understand what you
wrote. Cutting out unnecessary big words is fine;
eliminating too many of the little words that hold the
content together only makes your writing harder to
follow.
The big, content-filled words are the nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs of the language. The little
words—the articles, conjunctions, and prepositions -
fill in the spaces between the big words.
The spurious conciseness that comes from omitting
little words can interfere most when writers string
nominals together without any little words to help
people group the parts together. These sequences, also
called "noun sandwiches" or "mountains of modifiers,"
yield such insurmountable phrases as
Inferior product labeling requirements
Agency management planning system enhancements
Surtace water quality protection procedures
development.
Strings like these have several drawbacks, among
them a stultifying rhythm. The most telling objection,
however, is that people have considerable difficulty
decoding Jhem —figuring out what words should be
grouped together as units. Does the first example
mean
Inferior requirements for labeling products
or
Requirements for labeling inferior products?
Nobody could tell when the example consisted of four
big words; but the ambiguity disappears as soon as the
little word (for) appears. Similarly,
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Enhancements to the Agency's system of management
planning
and
Development of procedures to protect the quality of
surface water
add to the total number of words in the other two
examples but are just as concise and are substantially
clearer.
The little words can also come to the rescue when
you must write //. . . then or unless sentences with
conjoined phrases inside them. English has no device
as clear as the parentheses from mathematics, which
make A or B and C turn into
(A or B) and C
or
A or (B and C).
Here is an example:
Who must comply with the reporting requirements? If a
firm has more than 100 employees or has subsidiaries in
more than one State and exports its products outside
the United States, then it must comply with the
reporting requirements under Section 302.
Chewy prose, isn't it? It is also in the ambiguous A or
B and C form, without grouping. Read on to find
three practical suggestions for coping with examples
like that.
The first suggestion is to use lists:
If a firm (1) has more than 100 employees or has
subsidiaries in more than one State and (2) exports its
products outside the United States, then it must comply
with the reporting requirements under Section 302
The grouping is now unambiguously (A or B) and C.
You can also separate the parts of the list using
indented paragraphs. Suppose the example meant the
following:
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If a firm has more than 100 employees or-
• has subsidiaries in more than one State and
• exports its products outside the United States,
then it must comply with the reporting requirements
under Section 302.
Now the grouping is A or (B and C). Either style
makes the grouping clearer.
A third device, which doesn't get in the way as
much as peppering your writing with numbers or
bullets, is to repeat little words. Another way to write
the example is as follows:
If a firm has more than 100 employees or if it has
subsidiaries in more than one State and exports its
products outside the United States, then it must comply
with the reporting requirements under Section 302.
The one extra word (the second if) immediately makes
the grouping A or (B and C). Moving the second //
down near the and, in the following,
If a firm has more than 100 employees or has
subsidiaries in more than one State and if it exports its
products outside the United States, then it must comply
with the reporting requirements under Section 302.
makes the grouping unambiguously (A or B) and C.
All those changes in meaning by moving one little
word!
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BE TASTEFUL
Lurking in the bushes, waiting to take potshots at
Government writing, are the self-appointed Guardians
of the Public Tongue. The Guardians consider
obscure, jargon-laden, or ungrammatical writing a
breach of good taste.
The way to deal with those guardians and the
pressures they create is to Be Tasteful: to write
grammatically and unobtrusively. Three sections in
this chapter should help make you aware of these
matters of taste. The first applies to choosing neutral
gender forms. The second discusses three traditional
rules of grammar— rules that, although some
grammarians would say they are not valid, you should
observe anyway instead of letting people think you
had never heard of them. The third section brings in
the ever-present problem of how to avoid jargon.
CONUNDRUMS
OF GENDER
A conundrum is a problem that has no satisfactory
solution. That's what people face when they must
select gender-marked forms.
Everyone is aware of the problems that arise with
examples like these:
(I) As Chairman (Chairwoman? Chairperson? Chair?
Head Representative?) of the Task Force, 1 believe... .
(2) Every Regional Administrator should send his (her?
his/ her? his-or-her? their1') forms in by June 30.
People choose up sides quickly on what form to use. If
your writing strongly identifies you with one side or
the other, you may be caught in a crossfire of
potshots.
On one side of the'argument are those who feel that
the English language, through forms like chairman in
example (1) and his in example (2), subtly and ob-
20
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jectionably biases our thinking against women—that
masculine gender leads us to think first and perhaps
exclusively about people of the masculine sex.
On the other side of the argument are those who
believe that the contortions to avoid the problem are
worse than the problem itself. They know that
incorrect grammar, as in the next example, with its
singular subject and plural pronoun their, is wrong:
(3) Each respondent should send in their comments
within 30 days.
They believe intrusive punctuation, which creates
forms like s/he and his/her, is unnecessary. They
laugh at new formations like chairperson, spokes-
person, and Congressperson.
Both sides may have a point. But since people have
become embroiled in such a controversy, EPA writers
can Be Tasteful by trying not to offend either camp.
Here are two guidelines for doing that.
Avoid clearly sex-marked titles. The Guardians of the
Public Tongue have probably lost their battle against
chairperson (and more terms like it will eventually
become acceptable). Nevertheless, you should steer
clear of most of the other forms whenever you can.
For example: many people object to man years, and
others don't like person years. Compromise and use
work years. Similarly, instead of the difficult new form
spokesperson choose the equally neutral form
representative, speaker, or head representative. In case
of doubt, however, use the new coinage (-person)
instead of the sex-marked form, provided you have
considered the alternative and have tried to avoid a
confrontation.
Rewrite to avoid the problem. For example (2),
which is especially interesting since EPA has female
Regional Administrators, choosing his or her over his
or their
(2a) Each Regional Administrator should send his or
her forms in by June 30
is acceptable, but not the best choice. Compare what
happens if all the forms are plural:
(2b) The Regional Administrators should send their
forms in by June 30.
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Both examples mean the same thing. Example (2b) is
better because the issue of choosing a lengthy form or
a sex-marked form does not come up.
Careful, though. You can change your meaning by
indiscriminately substituting plurals for singulars.
Example (4a) doesn't mean the same as example (4b):
(4a) Each Regional Administrator will deliver his or her
conclusions at the meeting.
(4b) The Regional Administrators will deliver their
conclusions at the meeting.
Example (4a) means only one thing, but (4b) is
ambiguous: will they deliver their conclusions as a
group or will they speak separately?
HOBGOBLINS The Guardians of the Public Tongue are sometimes
OF STYLE trigger happy. Some of the old rules—call them
"hobgoblins"—are really not so hard and fast as the
Guardians would like them to be. Usage changes over
time. Good writers know that rules have exceptions
and that they sometimes must break one. Tasteful
writers break rules only after they have considered the
alternative.
As Government writers, how should you approach
the examples of changing language discussed in the
rest of this section? Try to adhere to the rules anyway,
not solely for the sake of obeying them but because
you jar your readers, and distract them from your
message, when you break the rules.
To Split or The split infinitive is a fine example of a hobgoblin of
Not to Split? style. Some people think this example,
(5) We would lose our ability to flexibly respond to
unique situations,
in which flexibly splits the infinitive to respond, is a
mistake.
Of course, moderation is the soul of Being Tasteful.
Even the Guardians would say example (5) is a
moderate violation of no splitting, but example (6), in
which four words split to respond, is a flagrant
violation:
(6) The law requires EPA to adequately, completely,
and legally respond to the guidelines.
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(Why not to respond adequately. . .legally'') Example
(6) not only stirs up the hobgoblins, but also makes it
harder for the reader to figure out what EPA needs to
do—namely, to respond.
The tasteful solution is to split an infinitive only
after you have considered the alternative. The choice,
barring a complete rewrite, involves moving the
splitting words. The adverb (flexibly, in to flexibly
respond) usually will fit comfortably toward the right,
after the infinitive. Thus, instead of to flexibly
respond, choose (7) or (8):
(7) We would lose our ability to respond flexibly to
unique situations.
(8) We would lose our ability to respond to unique
situations flexibly.
(Either one is fine; the first may be better because it
emphasizes flexibly a little more.)
Stay sensitive to the split infinitive. The minimal
amount of word-juggling necessary to avoid splitting is
surely less of a penalty than having your readers start
wondering about extraneous matters such as whether
you have split an infinitive.
About What Another frightening hobgoblin springs forth if you end
to Write? with a preposition; that is, if you write
The laws which we wrote you about
instead of
The laws about which we wrote you.
The first example ends with one of those short words
normally called prepositions.
Once again, it is easier to accommodate the
Guardians and avoid distracting clauses that end with
at, about, of, in, and so on. Sometimes, however, you
can't avoid it. There is no convenient way to avoid
ending with of in this example;
Each year the city produces five million tons of waste
which it must dispose of.
The usual solution, moving the little word into the
sentence (in front of the word which), is not even
English for that example:
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Each year the city produces five million tons of waste of
which it must dispose
and another choice we have seen is much more jarring
than ending with the proposition:
Each year the city produces five million tons of waste
which it must dispose.
In other words, ending with a preposition is
sometimes the only choice. But consider the
alternative: if you can just as easily avoid it, do.
The Media Is (Are) At EPA, when you do budgets, work with numbers,
the Message? and make decisions, you run the risk of offending the
Guardians of the Public Tongue. They, having studied
Latin, Greek, or traditional English grammar, learned
their declensions well:
One medium, two media.
One datum, two data
One criterion, two criteria.
These unfamiliar plurals confuse a surprising number
of people, yielding illiteracies like
The first criteria is administrability.
The Air Media has gained 15 positions.
It also produces discomforting sentences like
The data shows that .
You can avoid the fancy word criterion either by
recasting the sentence with plurals (The first of the
criteria) or by substituting a synonym like method of
choosing or measure.
The other two are harder to avoid because they
appear more frequently as singular words—media is
and data is. Media, at EPA, is hardly used except as
the "last name" in the budget for Drinking Water,
Pesticides, and Enforcement. You can avoid the
illiteracy media is often by shifting to "first names." In
place of
The Enforcement Media has 42 positions,
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see what happens it you drop the word media entirely,
in a context that makes it clear you're talking about
media:
Enforcement has 42 positions.
Datum never appears except in geological surveys,
and its plural, data, now stands for a clump of numbers
instead of a plural collection of individual numbers. In
other words, many people at EPA already use data as
a singular noun. Using it that way, however, exposes
your writing to the risk of not Being Tasteful. To use
that word as a singular is another way, like breaking
rules without reason, to allow your readers to
concentrate on how you said something instead of
what you said.
The solution, one that appears often in this manual,
is to avoid the problem. When tempted to use data is,
for example, see if information, results, or quantities
will work. But if you need data, use a plural verb.
TASTELESS
JARGON
!n a recent memorandum, Deputy Administrator
Barbara Blum stated EPA's policy toward jargon:
Our regulations will be written in clear, understandable
language, without jargon, bureaucratese, archaic legal
phrases, or incorrect grammatical construction.
Hercules had trouble cleaning out the Augean
stables (they hadn't been cleaned for 30 years), and
you may have trouble eliminating your jargon and
bureaucratese. The reason is human nature: one
person's necessary technical phrase is another's
unintelligible jargon. The cure lies with you. If you
keep your audience in mind, much of the pressure to
slip into jargon will disappear. Beyond that, try
concentrating on two particular causes of jargon in
EPA writing: EPA's mixture of specialists and, more
generally, the inbred community in Washington.
Borrowing
Vogue Words
At any EPA office there are scientists, engineers,
lawyers, economists, mathematicians, and administra-
tors. All of these specialists have their own technical
vocabularies.
When people use their own technical words correctly
and in the proper context, those words are not
offensive—they are necessary to communicate
accurately.
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• MAI HEMAT1CIANS use parameter, factor, and
optimize to refer to special concepts.
• COMPUTER SPECIALISTS employ input, interface,
and data base.
• ECONOMISTS need elasticity and marginal cost.
• BUSINESS ADMINISIRATORS use discount and
annual basis.
• SCIENIISTS need teratogenic and mutagemc.
• LAWYERS need litigate, proximate cause, and
remand.
• GRAMMARIANS cannot avoid gerund, infinitive, and
nominal.
What happens, though, is that the sublanguages
crossbreed, and the resulting hybrid becomes
unintelligible to many readers. Spotting words that
cross from someone else's special language to the
general language is relatively easy. It is harder, of
course, to eliminate the special words from your own
material when you're writing for an audience outside
your specialty.
Probably the worst crossbreeder is legal language.
Take three legal favorites: prior to, subsequent to, and
due to. Those three phrases create a double problem.
First, they make your writing sound like legalese.
EPA's regulations and other documents, even with
legal concepts in them, do not need to sound that way.
Second, they bring in the nominals discussed in "Be
Clear." Compare
Prior to our meeting
Subsequent to our discussion
Due to our collection of incorrect data
with
Before we met
After we discussed
Because we collected incorrect data.
Substituting more familiar words (before, after,
because) is always an advantage; in addition, the
second set of examples now contains verbs (we met,
we discussed, we collected), not nouns doing the work
of verbs (our meeting, our discussion, our collection).
Another crossbreeder is statutory language.
Lawmakers have a long tradition of using you shall to
mean you must. People who speak plain English,
however, can misinterpret the strange-sounding
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sentences built around shall. The following sentence,
for example, is ambiguous:
The Administrator shall publish the regulation on
August 15, 1981
Transport yourself to the future—to August 16, 1981,
one day after the Administrator shall have published
the regulation. Suppose the regulation did not get
published. Would you say (a) or (b)?
(a) The Administrator violated the law.
(b) The prediction about publication did not come true
The word shall has two meanings, a shall of
obligation, the meaning in example (a), or the shall of
prediction, meaning (b). The courts have voided laws
because the writers had let both meanings for shall
creep into the legislation.
Fortunately, plain English speakers have two words
that express the meaning of the ambiguous shall. For
the shall of obligation, they use must; for the shall of
prediction, they use will.
The solution to the ambiguity, then, is simple. Never
use shall, even in regulations and even if the law that
the regulation represents uses it. Decide what you
mean when you use shall, then substitute one of the
two plain English words, must (when someone is
obligated to do something) or in'//(when you predict
something will happen).
Inbreeding Our People who work together develop their own language.
Own Jargon New words catch on, are repeated, and spread almost
daily. Those who use them understand the words
perfectly well even if the words are difficult. No one
would ever complain about complicated words for
complicated concepts, but complicated words used
with no reason are not tasteful.
What members of the public find offensive are
overused, pet government words. Using the same
words in every paragraph—especially words that do
not refer to technical concepts—dilutes their effect.
Several people went through Zero-Based Dislike
Analysis to come up with the following brief list of pet
words, arranged by the intensity of dislike. The list is a
sample of the words and phrases that people at EPA
are overusing:
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• To impact on. A barbarism. Even an impact is
used too often, diluting a few good uses. Impact
often hides ignorance of the distinction between to
a/fed (to influence) and an effect (a result).
Impacted makes some people worry about wisdom
teeth; substitute affected or harmed.
• Prioritize. An etymological horror. Replace with
assign priorities to or rank by priority. Its cousin,
finalize (replace with make final, complete, or
finish) also belongs here. People cringe when they
hear such words.
• Implement. Why can't anybody do, carry out, or
perform anything? Try to use this hallmark
Government word sparingly, reserving it
exclusively for contexts in which it has no
substitute. Similar comments apply to necessitate,
facilitate, and accomplish: all are long words
virtually unused outside the Government.
Be wary of fancy words and catchy phrases that
only you know how to use. Let the power of your
ideas and the clarity of your expression carry the day,
not the number of syllables or the number of abstract
words you use. To avoid jargon, Be Tasteful.
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BE CAREFUL
In the rush to get something down on paper, you may
have had to sacrifice clarity and probably elegance to
the pressure of time. Therefore you should always
reread what you have written after it has cooled.
While they are writing, people often say, "What am I
going to say next?" or "Sounds rough, but I'll fix it
later." When they finish, they should be asking
whether they have made their point clearly and
tastefully.
To change something you wrote is never a sin; no
professional writer expects to sell a first draft. In fact,
two more trips through your document are necessary
after you have written it: first to edit, then to
proofread. The changes you make then are the essence
of Being Careful.
TECHNIQUES FOR
EDITING YOUR
OWN MATERIAL
Editing your own material is difficult: if you wrote it,
it's what you wanted to say. But your audience will
judge whether you have communicated effectively, not
you.
Since medical science has not yet come up with an
operation to allow you to put yourself in other
people's shoes (at least not while they're still in them),
how can you possibly write as if you were there? Two
practical principles, which substitute an almost
mechanical procedure for the empathy you are
seeking, should help. The first is the Concession
Theory of Editing, a device for using other people to
help you find places where you should make changes.
The second is the Red Flag Approach to Editing,
which says that there are certain constructions
(marked with imaginary red flags) that you should
examine in more detail. That approach cannot
completely replace writing with your audience
paramount in your mind, but looking for passives and
multiple-noun constructions is at least a way to begin.
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The Concession
Theory of Editing
The first principle for Being Careful is broad. Under
the Concession Theory of Editing, you change
something you have written—concede and rewrite— if
it misleads someone. It does no good to swear on a
stack of grammar books, or trace an intricate path to
the meaning, if someone cannot follow what you have
written. Material in draft form is fluid; treat it that
way and change it often.
One easy way to apply the Concession Theory is to
use it for ambiguous phrases. Writers rarely realize
that something they write can mean something else to
their audience, because only one of the two meanings
stands out for the writer—just not for the reader. Take
a simple 4-letter word like lead. Is that "leed" or
"ledd"? Anyone who wrote a heading like Lead
Recommendation or phrases like lead standard or lead
agency would have no trouble, but even a knowledge-
able reader could go chasing a wild goose if the
context did not make them completely clear.
The Government writer's workhorse, the acronym,
can also confuse readers. Civil Service reform, for
example, has introduced an Office of Personnel
Management, yielding the same OPM as EPA's Office
of Planning and Management. An Office of Railroad
Deregulation, if there were one, would yield another
ORD to clash with EPA's own Office of Research and
Development.
Changes to clarify an ambiguous word or two are
easy, of course. The next step is to extend the
concessions to phrases, sentences, and paragraphs.
Remember: if you let the reactions of people around
you direct you to what you need to change, you can
make those changes while the document is still under
your control. Certainly that is preferable to having
other people, with a different perspective, come along
and "clarify" to meet their own preconceptions.
In other words, use the Concession Theory in group
writing, when other people are reviewing and
questioning your material. Liberally applying the
Concession Theory—realizing that there are always
other ways to get the point across—will help you to
avoid "I'm right, you're wrong" confrontations. Using
the Concession Theory you can say, "Let's change it to
make the point clearer."
The Red Flag
for Passives
Earlier, we said that the passive voice is a prime
contributor to an impersonal writing style. The passive
voice can also be acceptable, in moderation. The Red
30
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Flag Approach can help you determine whether
individual instances of the passive voice are necessary
or not.
Here is how the Red Flag approach works for the
passive. Look through your material, then follow four
steps. Consider the following example:
The study will be completed by this Agenc> within six
months.
Step 1. Find the -ed verb (a past participle- here,
complelecf).
Step 2. Find what follows the word hy. (If it's not
there, supply it.) In the example, this Agency follows
b\~ and is the actor in the sentence.
Step 3. Recast the sentence in the active voice.
There is no need to write anything down yet this is a
mental exercise (and good practice).
This Agencv will complete the study within six months.
Step 4. Test whether the sentence is better in the
active (often the right choice) or should stay in the
passive.
That decision in Step 4, however, is still open to
judgment. Three additional questions may help you
decide: (I) Are the transitions evident? (2) Is the actor
clear? and (3) Is the active sentence balanced?
Are the transitions evident? The beginning of a
sentence is often the place for a transition, a phrase
that reinforces your organization. Since passive
sentences move something that was farther back (the
object of an active verb) to the front (subject of a
passive verb), they can move transitional phrases
toward the front. Suppose you are writing something
about the Clean Air Act and ha\e used a quotation
from the Act, mentioning energy requirements, as your
organi/ing principle. You spend several paragraphs on
other topics. Then, starting your next paragraph, you
write
Energy requirements were included in the model the five
agencies in the I ask Force on Energv will use to project
the effects of the new standards
Try the test: (1) red flag at included; (2) no by, but
probably the five agencies, etc., included the
requirements; (3) consider the alternative:
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The five agencies in the Task Force on Energy included
energy requirements in the model they will use to
project the effects of the new standards.
Here the balance may tip toward the passive, because
using it causes the paragraph to begin with a
transitional phrase (Energy requirements), picking up
the language in your organizing paragraph. In this
example, placement of transitions may take precedence
over the normal tendency to put more sentences in the
active voice.
Is the actor clear? Every time a Red Flag pops up in
connection with a passive, a second flag should pop up
when you search for the by phrase and can't find one.
Ask yourself what phrase you should add to complete
the sentence. On a few occasions, the actor is (a)
totally redundant, (b) refers to everyone, or (c) refers
to people you cannot name. For example:
(a) The Task Force report was prepared during the last
two weeks.
(b) It is generally accepted that aerobic digestion is less
sensitive to upsets than anaerobic digestion.
(c) The samples were washed, then titrated at pH 3.
Example (a) is acceptable as a passive if the Task
Force really prepared the report. The example is
misleading, however, if a contractor had prepared the
report—and the passive is back at work hiding who
did what. In example (b), the sentence says (as the
word generally hints) that everyone accepts a fact
about aerobic digestion. These general statements are
acceptable without an actor. In example (c), your
answer to "Who did it?" should be "Who cares?" In
restricted cases like this example, when you're sure
that nobody cares, the passive is again acceptable.
Is the active sentence balanced? Sometimes, after you
have reconstructed the active sentence corresponding
to the passive you wrote originally, you will find that
you prefer the passive because it simply sounds better.
Fine. You've considered the alternative, and that is the
point of the Red Flag Approach.
The Red Flag Some nominals are a necessary evil in most writing on
for Noun Sandwiches technical subjects. How could EPA people write
-without
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resource recovery,
effluent limitations,
land use planning,
waste treatment?
But when you find nommals and other words stacked
up—sandwiched together more than two deep, it is
time for caution. Take an example:
Direct product design regulations,
in this case, four words stacked up without any little
words to help group them together. Recast the phrase,
supplying for, the, and of:
Direct regulations for the design of products.
(You thought they were regulations for designing
direct products? Your reader might for a moment.) Or,
better, use an -ing form for one of the nominals,
Direct regulations for designing products.
Then ask yourself whether the original or either of the
two options sounds best and is the easiest for your
reader to understand.
Try the following rule of thumb for unpacking these
constructions:
Unpack 3-word noun sandwiches for the first few
references, then allow them to stand together.
Always unpack 4-word sandwiches.
After all, who ever heard of a sandwich that went
bread-meat-bread-meat?
The reason for the rule of thumb is familiarity. As
people work with complex concepts, they begin to use
larger and larger chunks of words to describe them.
They pronounce those chunks easily and understand
them well; the words often turn into acronyms. When
you have reached the stage when you process 4-word
sandwiches comfortably, however, you have lost the
public. They must superimpose emphasis and grouping
on the long phrase, and that takes time and increases
frustration. Give your readers a break.
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HINTS FOR Proofreading is an art. Most material, thank goodness,
PROOFREADING never needs the exacting, meticulous review that
professional proofreaders can provide. But it never
hurts to know some tricks because random typos can
be embarrassing ("Container deposits are more than
the public can beer") or downright offensive ("Due to
employee suckness, the plant is closed").
Here are five practical suggestions to help in
proofreading. They apply to you and to your typist.
1. Go to the dictionary often. Never be ashamed to go
to the dictionary. If a word looks strange, check it.
Try this rule of thumb: if you really needed to consult
the dictionary in only 20 percent of the cases when
you actually did, you are using it appropriately. Put
another way: don't be frustrated if 80 percent of the
trips to the dictionary apparently were not necessary.
They were.
2. Sound out long words. Long words are tricky: if
they start right and end right, we skip over what is in
the middle. To counteract that tendency, sound out all
the vowels; for example, make fluoride come out as
flew-oh-nde.
3. Reread lines containing an error. It is human
nature to pounce on mistakes, it is also human nature
to make two mistakes close together. Rereading lines
containing errors helps break these all-too-human
tendencies.
4. Read backwards to break content. Use this
technique for solo proofreading, when the material
must be exceptionally error free. Read the material
once from top to bottom (this is useful for catching
singular subjects with plural verbs and for spotting
dropped "minor" words like nut). Then grit your teeth
and read backwards. You will not understand what
you are reading, but you will be sure the words are
spelled right.
5. Have two people read to each other. This is the
best method, especially if the one who worked from
the draft copy now reads the typescript.
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APPENDIX
OTHER RESOURCES
This manual does not need to be your only resource
for becoming a better writer. The books in this
appendix can help you with general perspectives
toward writing, with choosing the right words, and
with punctuation
JOOKS ON
WRMING
Everyone should own a copy of the little book. The
Elements of Style (1). by William Strunk and E.B.
White. In concise, drill-sergeant style, the book covers
topics like these:
Use the active voice.
Put statements in positive form.
Omit needless words
Strunk was an English teacher at Cornell for years; his
paperback (71 pages) is now a best seller.
A good resource for people writing technical mate-
rial is H.J. Tichy's Effective Writing for Engineers-
Managers-Scientists (2). Along with several chapters
on common faults in writing, Tichy includes chapters
on planning, organizing, and outlining.
Another recent entry to the literature on writing is
Richard Wydick's Plant English for Lawyers (3), which
attacks many of the paired phrases formerly
considered essential to "lawyer talk": free and clear,
true ami correct, knowingly and intelligently. The
book also has exercises.
BOOKS ON
WORD CHOICE
The most thorough and incisive book on writing and
style is H.W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern
English Usage (4). Few people can just pick up
Fowler, get the answer to a question, and put the
book down, it is too interesting. For example, the
entry on cliches refers to other sections on hackneyed
phrases and vogue words, which cross-reference
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popularized technicalities. And on and on.
A book similar to Fowler, but published for
American writers, is W. and M. Morris's Harper
Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (5). The Morrises
asked 136 writers and editors (Shana Alexander,
Heywood Hale Broun, Walt Kelly, Herman Wouk,
and others) to comment on several controversial points
of grammar. For example, using hopefully to mean
"we hope" instead of "full of hope" received a 24
percent vote when used in writing (76 percent said they
would never use it) and produced comments like these:
Slack-jawed, common, sleazy.
1 have sworn eternal war on this bastard adverb.
Chalk squeaking on a blackboard is to be preferred to
this usage.
The results of the Harper survey also appear in the
American Heritage Dictionary.
Another writer who gives excellent explanations of
why to avoid certain words and constructions is
Theodore Bernstein, long the arbiter of style at The
New York Times. His Watch Your Language (6),
although written primarily for newspaper writers, is a
classic; less well known is Miss Thistlebottom's
Hobgoblins (7), subtitled "The Careful Writer's Guide
to the Taboos, Bugbears and Outmoded Rules of
English Usage." Miss Thistlebottom, a true Guardian
of the Public Tongue, was Bernstein's imaginary
English teacher at P.S. 10.
For light reading on contemporary extravagance in
language, try Edwin Newman's Strictly Speaking (8)
and A Civil Tongue (9). Newman, who works for the
National Broadcasting Company, has become a highly
successful opponent of Government-speak.
MANUALS OF STYLE Style, in the strict sense, refers to rules for
punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. The most
convenient resource for the rules is a dictionary.
Surprisingly few people know, for example, that
dictionaries contain short sections on how to use
commas, periods, semicolons, and the like. The
Merriam-Webster New Collegiate Dictionary (10)
contains a 16-page summary at the end of the book.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language (11) has information on marks of
punctuation under headings in the dictionary proper.
The Government Printing Office Style Manual (12)
is superbly complete on all the rules the Government
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has adopted. Together with pages of discussion on
marks of punctuation, for example, are rules for
forming compounds (it says to spell most compounds
with non without a hyphen: nonsignificant), lists of
preferred spellings (indexes), and even spellings for all
counties in the United States (Prince Georges,
Maryland).
EPA has a Correspondence Manual ( 13),
incorporating much of the GPO Manual as well as
specific instructions for memorandums and letters.
Almost every branch at Headquarters has a copy. You
can get additional copies at the Distribution Center at
Headquarters (B-10, East Tower) or by asking the
local Directives Officer (Management Division) in the
Regions.
The best manual of style to treat book design
whether the Preface precedes the Foreword, and so
on is the University of Chicago's Manual of Stvle
(14).
The Federal Register contains rules (1 CFR 21.1 53)
on how to number regulations. In its vocabulary, the
Code of Federal Regulations has this orgam/ation:
I itles Arabic numerals
Subtitles Capital letters
Chapters Roman capitals
Parts Arabic numerals
Subparts Capitals
Below Subparts are sections and paragraphs.
Section numbers appear after a decimal point
following their Part; Part 15, section 22 would appear
as §15.22.
Paragraphs ha\e a special numbering sequence:
(a)
(A)
The Federal Register Office also plans to reissue its
own manual of style, covering many of the topics in
this manual but in a more abbreviated fashion.
37
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REFERENCES 1. Strunk, William, Jr., and E.B. White. The
Elements of Style. New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1959.
2. Trchy, H.G. Effe( ive Writing for Engineers-
Managers-Sett nn.>t;. Jew York: John Wiley & Sons,
1967.
3. Wydick, Richard C. Plain English for Lawyers.
Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1979.
4. Fowler, H.W. A Dictionary of Modern English
Usage, Second Edition, revised and edited by Sir
Ernest Gowers. New York: Oxford University Press,
1965.
5. Morris, William, and Mary Morris. Harper
Dictionary of Contemporary Usage. New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, "1975.
6. Bernstein, Theodore M. Watch Your Language.
New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1965.
7. . Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins: The
Careful Writer's Guide to the Taboos, Bugbears and
Outmoded Rules of English Usage. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1971.
8. Newman, Edwin. Strictly Speaking: Will America
Be the Death of English? New York: The Bobbs-
Merrill Company, Inc., 1974.
9. . A Civil Tongue. New York: Warner
Books, Inc., 1976.
10. G.C. Merriam & Co. Webster's New Collegiate
Dictionary. New York: G.C. Merriam Co., 1977.
11. Morris, William (ed.). The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976.
12. Government Printing Office. GPO Style Manual.
13. Correspondence Manual, TN 1320.2 (12-11-72)
and periodic attachments.
14. University of Chicago Press. A Manual of Style:
For Authors, Editors, and Copywriters, Twelfth
Edition, Revised. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1969.
38
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Do you want more copies?
Call the Printing Management
Office at 755-0890 or
stop by the Public Information
Center(PM-215), Room G-100
East Tower.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Region 5, Library (PL-12J)
77 West Jackson Boulevard, 12th Floor
Chicago, IL 60604-3590
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