Clarity For Effortless Reading.

Date: (07/30/2013)

As Enrique Jardiel Poncela notes that “When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing”, writers should put forth their best effort to make their text readable without effort. Clarity is one of the most important factors that a paper needs to provide to make it readable and to draw attention of readers. To write concisely, in parallel structure, and using active voice are the key points to achieve a clear and engaging paper. It is important to write concisely to keep the reader’s attention and to make sure that the writing is clear. Concise writing does not mean using the fewest words, however, it is to write with the most effective words. As the most effective words are chosen, the writing gets more concise and readable. In general, the more specific words the writers use, the more concise writing is. Prudent word choice helps writers keep the readers’ attention making them engaged and stay on topic. Therefore, using specific words makes writers communicate their thoughts more effectively. If words are heavy burden, they had better be changed with effective ones. On the other hand, some sentences can easily be combined with one another without conceding any of their value, thus giving the text clarity. It is also important to write in parallel structure which means parallelism to add both influence and clarity to the writing. Parallel structure or parallelism means omitting redundant words and joining similar sentences and thoughts. By constructing a parallel structure, writers should choose the words to be combined in the same grammatical form so that they are parallel, such as all nouns, all gerunds, and all infinitives. When writers use parallel structure, they increase the intelligibility of their writing by forming word orders readers can pursue easily. In short, Parallelism in writing gives the text clarity and flow. To use active voice is crucial when forming sentences in which subjects act instead of objects because it gives the readers feeling that the paper has liveliness and it keeps them turn the pages eagerly. Active voice sentences are also shorter than passive voice ones and omitting some redundant words gives lucidity to the wiring. When writers use active voice their sentences are direct and they explicitly state the action being done by the subject. On the other hand, passive voice is indirect and the subject who performs the actions is hidden. To add clearness to the writing, active voice should be chosen over passive voice. To sum up, being concise, using parallel structure, and using active voice is so important that they provide clarity to the writing attracting the reader’s attention. Using too many words in different grammatical forms and in passive voice will make the paper bland and complex to read. Readers could understand the content without spending much effort.

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[ 1 ]. Helen Anderson, “Assignment 4,” Sakai, Naval Postgraduate School, last modified July 21, 2013, https://cle.nps.edu/xsl-portal/site/.