Writing English as a Second Language

I agree with and like William Zinsser on many points, and I believe he has helped countless budding authors and language learners over the years to develop good writing skills. I know I read his books years ago and profited from them (I will never forget a funny introduction to On Writing Well, where he highlighted the point that good writing skills can only be developed through persistent, hard work over a long period by featuring a conversion between an author and a brain surgeon - who did writing "on the side" - in which the author chimed in that he too planned to do some brain surgery "on the side").

That said, English is a rich, beautiful, and varied language and we should be careful not to box ourselves in with arbitrary rules that limit our style. Mr. Zinsser's admonition not to use or over-use Latin-origin words does just that and is therefore too arbitrary to be productive.

Take the word "productive," which I just used. At its root is the Latin duco, ducere, duxi, ductus, generally meaning "to lead." So we get, in English, a rich range of words such as duke, duct, deduce, reduce, induce, introduce, produce, and all their variants (deductive, inductive, productive, etc.), all useful words in the right context.

Now there are countless words like this in English, and I don't think it is meaningful to try to sort them out from words having an Anglo-Saxon lineage and others thought to have punchier qualities. After all, well over half of English vocabulary derives from Latin and it seems self-defeating to limit yourself to less than half of the words available to you in choosing ways to express yourself.

Yes, do avoid writing in a bloated or hopelessly abstract style. Use punchy verbs to liven things up as occasion allows. But don't waste your time trying to sort words out by their etymological origin because words derived from Latin are not "the enemy" and, even if some of them are stilted, many or even most are not.

If I may suggest my own rule: do not mechanically apply arbitrary rules on word choice but rather choose your words to suit the context, following your instincts for what sounds right for your intended reader.

I'm a big fan of this style, and I recommend Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" as the canonical take on it. He would have a field day with "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"!

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

There is a tradeoff here though. Shakespeare's language was elaborate and complex but still powerful. He loved rummaging through the back of the vocabulary cupboard to find just the right word.

Quibble: he should have mentioned Joseph Conrad (or another writer like him), whose first language was not English.

As a German learning to write in English I had to constantly remind myself to keep my sentences short :)

I share his stylistic preferences, but Zinsser is a prick. (How's that for simple and forceful?) He's a prick suffering from a bad case of déformation professionnelle. (Ha! That isn't even English!) To further express my disdain for his advice, I have made my response extremely long.

Consider his first example:

“Dear member: The board of governors has spent the past year considering proactive efforts that will continue to professionalize the club and to introduce efficiencies that we will be implementing throughout 2009.” That means they’re going to try to make the club run better.

His translation is incomplete. "Better" isn't a synonym for "more professionally and efficiently." "Better" could mean all kinds of things. Perhaps it would be plainer to say they're trying to cut down on waste and sloppiness, but that may not be accurate either. Waste and sloppiness are relative to a person's awareness and capabilities. Perhaps raising their their awareness and capabilities to the point where they recognized waste and sloppiness in their operation was part of the process. That would be rather complicated to explain, but if they refer to "waste and sloppiness" then the reader is likely to get the impression that the waste and sloppiness have long been evident.

He also didn't communicate the time frame: they've spent a year discussing what to do, and now they're going to spend a year (or whatever remains of 2009) doing it. Whatever. He doesn't care. Their version communicates that they've done a lot of careful work to plan the improvements; he prefers a version that implies they don't know what they're doing. How easy it is to be concise when you want your readers to lose confidence in you.

Could he really write what they wanted to say more concisely? Probably so. There are some obvious improvements to make. But he refuses to try or even to offer any useful advice, because he doesn't give a shit about what they wanted to say, or what they were trying to accomplish by sending the letter. He has contempt for the task they are faced with. Contempt for what they do and what they're trying to say.

It's the same story with the next example:

“As I walk around the Academy,” she writes, “and see so many gifted students interacting with accomplished, dedicated adults” [that means boys and girls talking to teachers] and consider the opportunities for learning that such interpersonal exchanges will yield…” Interpersonal exchanges! Pure garbage. Her letter is meant to assure us alumni that the school is in good hands. I’m not assured.

She conjures an image and interprets the image. He would strip out the interpretation and leave only the concrete image of students talking to teachers. Why? Her interpretation is a sentimental, idealistic sales pitch. "Pure garbage." Well, yes, but it's her job to provide a sentimental and idealistic sales pitch. He has contempt for her writing because he has contempt for her job.

Perhaps he could do a better job in these situations, but he obviously isn't interested. In neither case does he suggest a useful alternative. Instead, he suggests they should use language that is utterly inadequate for their purpose, and then presumably start looking for a less distasteful profession.

The words derived from Latin are the enemy—they will strangle and suffocate everything you write.... Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something.

Pity anyone who needs to communicate concepts and abstract ideas and who isn't free to use fiction or anecdote to do so. Clearly their writing skills are inferior to such people as

Joan Didion, who grew up in California and wrote brilliant magazine pieces about its trashy lifestyle in the 1960s. No anthropologist caught it better.

Should we really declare one approach to a subject "better" because it results in punchier prose? I enjoy simple, readable writing as much as anybody, and outside my own field I read it almost exclusively, but I wouldn't want to live in a world where all the anthropologists, economists, historians, doctors, lawyers, and bureaucrats gave up words such as communication, conversion, reconciliation, enhancement, and verification. I'd hate to read a shareholder report written in concrete images. (Perhaps each segment of a pie chart would be labeled with a vivid, engaging anecdote?)

All those nasty Latin words have "infected" our language because they're useful. "Approximation" cannot be used interchangeably with the nice, robust Anglo-Saxon "guess." (Or "stab" -- so much more vivid!) "Communicate" cannot be used interchangeably with "say," since often what is communicated is exactly the opposite of what is said.

You’ll be interviewing the men and women who are trying to solve those problems—school principals, social workers, health-care workers, hospital officials, criminal justice officials, union officials, church officials, police officers, judges, clerks in city and state agencies—and when you ask them a question, they will answer you in nouns: Latin noun clusters that are the working vocabulary of their field. They’ll talk about “facilitation intervention” and “affordable housing” and “minimum-density zoning,” and you will dutifully copy those phrases down and write a sentence that says: “A major immigrant concern is the affordable housing situation.” But I can’t picture the affordable housing situation. Who exactly are those immigrants? Where do they live? What kind of housing is affordable? To whom? As readers, we want to be able to picture specific people like ourselves, in a specific part of the city, doing things we might also do. We want a sentence that says something like “New Dominican families on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx can’t pay the rent that landlords ask.” I can picture that; we’ve all had trouble paying the landlord.

Now he's just being lazy. He laments that people talk using "the working vocabulary of their field." Why shouldn't they? It's his job as a writer to produce the working vocabulary of his field, which is punchy writing that keeps readers engaged. Doesn't he realize how frustrated other people must be with his insistence on dealing in nothing but vivid concrete images, not to mention his disdain for people who, because they face different tasks, must resort to different tools? Does he realize how frustrating it must be to talk to a writer who claims to be interested in the affordable housing situation but has no interest in the concepts and legal tools being used to address it, because they don't fit his professional mindset?

And that's why I say he suffers from déformation professionnelle. He judges everyone's prose as if they wrote for the same reasons he does. He says he wants to help people write, but he really just wants to make people write to a certain standard, the standard appropriate to one particular kind of writing, regardless of why and for whom they actually write. If they try to adapt their style to their actual circumstances, they cannot expect any help from him, only contempt.

after her first example i'm wondering if i should read the rest of the article:

""" Here’s a typical sentence: “Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That means “Before we fixed our money problems.” """

"fixed", "money" and "problems" are -- afaik -- what she calls latin words...

oooops!

"Don’t say currently if you can say now." Nice read.

Great read. As a multilingual speaker, I had quite some chuckles. And then there are pearls like these:

"Now I think it’s lovely that such a decorative language as Arabic exists. I wish I could walk around New York and hear people talking in proverbs."

"It no longer rains in America; your TV weatherman will tell that you we’re experiencing a precipitation probability situation."

"Remember: how you write is how you define yourself to people who meet you only through your writing. If your writing is pretentious, that’s how you’ll be perceived. The reader has no choice."