IN WRITING, ACHIEVING PRECISION LEADS TO EFFECTIVENESS, ECONOMY, AND CLARITY

Since obscurantism in writing hinders communication and irritates the reader, as an author I have no interest in promoting it. The best way to avoid obscurantism is to seek clarity through precision. Achieving precision in writing does not require authors to adopt a reductionist simplicity of presentation. On the contrary, literary works that are multi-faceted, ambitious in their dramatic, descriptive, and suggestive aims, symbolic, highly metaphoric, and subtly nuanced must necessarily use sophisticated rhetorical strategies to convey their layered, aggregated meanings—a requirement that inevitably produces complexity of presentation.

If it is well and carefully managed, complexity of presentation will not result in obscurantism. Effective management entails the author’s unrelenting quest for precision in all components of the writing. This commitment maps the route to clarity—deciding the order and sequence of elements, for example; establishing priorities; practicing economy of means; eliminating vagueness; finding the exact word that’s uniquely appropriate and “right” for the context, tone, and purpose; and finally, of course, assessing how the completed phrasing feels in the mouth and sounds to the ear.

To illustrate, I’ll reference two poems of mine contained on this website which I think demonstrate how a quest for precision of language, symbolic image, and choice of specific detail have produced both complexity of presentation and clarity of argument. (Click on titles below to open links.) [Remember to read the poems aloud.]

“Fadeout (for Jim Scrimgeour)”

“The Mummy”