Advice on Getting the Words Right

I've mentioned before that my favorite chapter in John Trimble's superb Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing (Prentice Hall, 2000) also happens to be the shortest. In a book otherwise packed with practical advice and apt examples, the chapter on revising is surprisingly spare--just a few lines from a 1958 Paris Review interview with Ernest Hemingway :

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.

"Getting the words right" may not be a satisfactory explanation of the messy, sometimes frustrating process that we call revising, but we're unlikely to find a more succinct description of it.

To help us get the words right, Trimble offers two tips for developing "an authentic and readable style":

1. Write with the assumption that your reader is a companionable friend with a warm sense of humor and an appreciation of simple straightforwardness.


2. Write as if you were actually talking to that friend, but talking with enough leisure to frame your thoughts concisely and interestingly.

You'll find plenty of sound advice here at Grammar & Composition, but none more useful or sensible than Trimble's twin tips.

More Writing Tips:

• Ten Quick Tips to Improve Your Writing
• Seven Secrets to Success in English 101
• Ten Tips for Composing a Successful Essay for the SAT or ACT