5 Principles of Clarity in Writing
We had another great webinar this week, this time with AJ Ogilvie, of ProWritingAid. AJ and Alexa talked about creating clarity in writing and making your writing reader-centric. You can watch the replay at https://youtu.be/Y0AIq123oRU. Be sure to read to the bottom of this post to grab the time-sensitive discount from ProWritingAid, especially for WIP readers!
AJ Ogilvie is a professor of business communication at the University of Southern California. He has taught business communication, consulting, writing, and literature courses for over ten years, and has published research on the theories of teaching, learning and communication.
In this webinar you will learn:
- How to craft sentences that produce clarity for readers
- How to effectively organize information for readers
- How to create writing that provides a fluid and low-effort reading experience for your audience
- How to use ProWritingAid towards the goal of clarity in your writing
Consider Your WHY
What are you writing? Your genre will determine your goals and answer the WHY of your writing. If you are writing fiction and creative non-fiction, your motivation is to get your readers to FEEL something. If you are writing for business, your motivation is to persuade and inspire action of some sort.
Defining Clarity
AJ described two kinds of clarity:
- Global
- Local
Global clarity is the overall organization of your writing that keeps the reader on a clear path from the beginning to the end.
Local clarity is your word choice, composition, and the ability for the reader to keep pace with you as the author.
These two types of clarity work with each other to make up a coherent and easy experience for the reader.
The Five Principles of Clarity
- Your subjects and verbs are the big actors and actions of the text.
- On a sentence level, the subject and verb go at the beginning of the sentence.
- Keep your subject and verb close together.
- Keep your text reader-centric by keeping your subjects to a minimum.
- Sentences should be linked logically.
In the video, AJ dives deeper into these five principles of clarity in writing. This is a true masterclass in refining your writing at the sentence and word level, a skill that many writers struggle with during the editing process. He also does a live demo of how this process looks in ProWritingAid, so be sure to head over to our webinars page to view the replay.
ProWritingAid is offering a 50% discount off a ProWritingAid license. Just go to https://womeninpublishingsummit.com/pwa, navigate to the pricing tab and use code WPS2050. Be sure to enter the code into the coupon code box beneath the pricing tables to update the pricing shown. This coupon code is valid for 48 hours, so jump on it now.
