How to Write Better Essays

28 Style – Economy

In this chapter you will learn:

• how to make sure your arguments are not obscured by superfluous
  words and phrases;


• a simple practical guide to improve your style;


• how to use the active voice wherever possible;


• how to avoid watering down your prose with too many adverbs,
  adjectives and prepositions.

Improving the readability and impact of

your writing

In the last section we examined the importance of simplicity in our

writing, the first of the two elements of style. This brings us to the need

for economy. Once you’ve thought your ideas through and planned

them carefully, your major concern thereafter should be to express

them clearly, concisely, with an economical use of words. In this lies

the essence of what most of us understand by ‘style’ – what the

Reverend Samuel Wesley once described as, ‘the dress of thought; a

modest dress, neat, but not gaudy’.^1

Even so, many students still find it difficult to abandon the belief that

somehow a good style is full of superfluous flourishes and filigrees of

‘tasteful’ affectation. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the

Reverend Wesley rightly points out, a good writing style is elegant, but

not ostentatious. Each component of a sentence should have a reason

for being there: it should have a clearly defined function. There should

be no wasted effort: no unnecessary words or phrases that obscure the

meaning of the sentence. Otherwise the clarity of your thought will be

lost, leaving the reader wondering what it all means.

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