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How to Say Nothing in 500 Words
Paul Roberts
Paul Roberts (1917-1967) was a linguist, a teacher, and a writer at San Jose State College from 1946 to 1960 and at Cornell University from 1962 to 1964. His books on writing, including English Syntax (1954) and Patterns of English (1956), have helped generations of high school and college students become better writers. "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" is taken from his best-known book, Understanding English (1958). Although written almost fifty years ago, the essay is still relevant for student writers today. Good writing, Roberts tells us, is not simply a matter of filling up a page; rather, the words have to hold the reader's interest, and they must say something. In this essay, Roberts uses lively prose and a step-by-step process to guide the student from the blank page to the finished essay. His bag of writing su;ptegies holds good advice for anyone who wants to write well.
PREPARING TO READ

How do you feel about writing? Do you find writing difficult? What are some of your most memorable experiences with writing in school or during your free tLne? How have these experiences affected your current attitude toward writing? Explain.

Nothing About Something

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t's Friday afternoon, and you have almost survived another week of classes. You are just looking forward dreamily to the weekend when the English instructor says: "For Monday you will turn in a fivehundred word composition on college football." Well, that puts a good big hole in the weekend. You don't have any strong views on college football one way or the other. You get rather excited during the season and go to all the home games and find it rather more fun than not. On the other hand, the class has been reading Robert Hutchins in the anthology and perhaps Shaw's "Eighty-Yard Run," and from the class discussion you have got the idea that the instructor thinks college football is for the birds. You are no fool, you. You can figure out what side to take. After dinner you get out the portable typewriter that you got for high school graduation. You might as well get it over with and enjoy Saturday and Sunday. Five hundred words is about two double-spaced

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pages with normal margins. You put in a sheet of paper, think up a title, and you're off: WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE ABOLISHED College football should be abolished because it's bad for the school and also bad for the players. The players are so busy practicing that they don't have any time for their studies. This, you feel, is a mighty good start. The only trouble is that it's only thirty-two words. You still have four hundred and sixty-eight to go, and you've pretty well exhausted the subject. It comes to you that you do your best thinking in the morning, so you put away the typewriter and go to the movies. But the next morning you have to do your washing and some math problems, and in the afternoon you go to the game. The English instructor turns up too, and you wonder if you've taken the right side after all. Saturday night you have a date, and Sunday morning you have to go to church. (You shouldn't let English assignments interfere with your religion.) What with one thing and another, it's ten o'clock Sunday night before you get out the typewriter again. You make a pot of coffee and start to fill out your views on college football. Put a little meat on the bones. WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE ABOLISHED In my opinion, it seems to me that college football should be abolished. The reason why I think this to be true is because I feel that football is bad for the colleges in nearly every respect. As Robert Hutchins says in his article in our anthology in which he discusses college football, it would be better if the colleges had race horses and had races with one another, because then the horses would not have to attend classes. I firmly agree with Mr. Hutchins on this point, and I am sure that many other students would agree too. One reason why it seems to me that college football is bad is that it become too commercial. In the olden times when people played just for the fun of it, maybe college football was all right, but they do play football just for the fun of it now as they used to in the old Nowadays college football is what you might call a big business. this is not true at all schools, and I don't think it is especially true at State, but certainly this is the case at most colleges and in America nowadays, as Mr. Hutchins points out in his very article. Actually the coaches and alumni go around to the high schools offer the high school stars large salaries to come to their colleges and football for them. There was one case where a high school star was a convertible if he would play football for a certain college.

Another reason for abolishing college football is that it is bad for the players. They do not have time to get a college education, because they are so busy playing football. A football player has to practice every afternoon from three to six, and then he is so tired that he can't c?ncentrate on his studies. He just feels like dropping off to sleep after ?mner, and then the next day he goes to his classes without having studIed and maybe he fails the test. (Good ripe stuff so far, but you're still a hundred and fifty-one words from home. One more push.) Also I think college football is bad for the colleges and the universities because not very many students get to participate in it. Out of a college ?f ten thousand students only seventy-five or a hundred play football, If that many. Football is what you might call a spectator sport. That means that most people go to watch it but do not play it themselves. i (Four hundred and fifteen. Well, you still have the conclusion and when you retype it, you can make the margins a little wider.) ' These are the reasons why I agree with Mr. Hutchins that college football should be abolished in American colleges and universities. On Monday you turn it in, moderately hopeful, and on Friday it comes back marked "weak in content" and sporting a big "D." This essay is exaggerated a little, not much. The English instructor will recognize it as reasonably typical of what an assignment on college football will bring in. He knows that nearly half of the class will contrive in five hundred words to say that college football is too commercial and bad for the players. Most of the other half will inform him that college football builds character and prepares one for life and brings pr~sti~e to the school. As he reads paper after paper all saying the same t~mg m almost t_he same words, all bloodless, five hundred words drip~mg out o~ nothm?, he wonders how he allowed himself to get trapped ~to teachmg Enghsh when he might have had a happy and interesting life as an electrician or a confidence man. Well, you may ask, what can you do about it? The subject is one on you have few convictions and little information. Can you be expected to make a dull subject interesting? As a matter of fact; this is what you are expected to do. This is the writer's essential task. subjects, except sex, are dull until somebody makes them interestThe _writer's jo? is to find the argument, the approach, the angle, . wor~mg that will take the reader with him. This is seldom easy, and IS partiCularly hard in subjects that have been much discussed: ColFootball, Fraternities, Popular Music, Is Chivalry Dead?, and the You will feel that there is nothing you can do with such subjects
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th in gs yo u ca n do s. But th er e are so me repeat th e ol d br om ide y alive, at least less ex ce pt rs, if no t th ro bb in gl will ma ke yo ur pape wh ich ise be. an th ey mi gh t oth erw insufferably ted iou s th s Co nt en t Avoid th e Obviou ed to be Say th at yo u'v e decid ent is college football. com~ to y~ur Say th e assignm argum~nt~ th at by pu tti ng do wn th e eu studies, against it. Begin stu de nts mm ds off th mmercial, it takes th e s instead of mi nd : it is to o co iversity a kin d of circu players, it makes th e un . Ca n you it is ha rd on th e it is financially ruinous nter, for mo st schools wh en you an intellectual ce ha nd ? All right. Now re arg um en ts just off this list. th in k of an y mo use any of the material on make sure that you don't p to everyone write yo ur paper, ur mi nd , th ey will lea po int s th at leap to yo wh eth er If the se are the. a "D" ma y de pe nd on eth er yo u get a "C" or nt or late, else's too, an d wh en he is fresh an d tol era ds yo ur paper early wh me too comth e instructor rea llege football has beco nce "In my op ini on , co k of lunacy. wh en th e sente ou gh t hi m to th e br in rably repeated, has br of yo ur own. mercial," inexo me rea so n or reasons college football for so en if the y Be against th at' s splendid. But ev an d perceptive ones, ng as they If th ey are keen u are still ah ea d so lo sh or indefensible, yo th e colleges are trivial or fooli Be ag ain st it because dy else's reasons too. because it is are no t ev ery bo ma ke it wo rth wh ile , ou gh mo ne y on it to forced to do n't sp en d en cause th e players are cters of spectators, be tif ul women, ba d for th e chara stars ho g all th e be au because th e football rican an d att en d classes, d is the ref or e un-Ame ete s wi th baseball an s un us ed reabecause it co mp are lots of mo re or les un ist inspired. There possibly Co mm college football. th e trite and sons for be ing against m up an d dispose of it is a go od ide a to su s th e advanSometimes to yo ur ow n. This ha in ts before go ing on er trite no r co nv en tio na l po u are going to be ne ith g to th e reader th at yo tage of in di ca tin in g like this: co nv en tio na l. So me th abolished because it llege football should be We are often told tha t co because it is bad for the players. These ercial or art has become too comm ry cogent, bu t they do n't really go to the he no doubt ve arguments are of the matter.

guardians of th e s, intelligent, useful as an d lovable companion e w or k- ill short, are faithful , indispensable in polic protectors of children ca n suggest th at house an d best friends. Or yo u said an d done, man's cuity of mi nd an d wh en all is re often th an not, a va ow n eyes conceal, mo ow n mo st intithose big br th e dogs yo u have kn ncy of purpose; th at le of instruction; an inconsta mpered brutes, incapab ve be en mangy, ill-te ev en t yo u from mately ha nd an d fear of arrest pr ly your nobility of mi th e street. an d th at on wh en yo u pass th em on 12 . e flea-ridden animals dictate your ap pr oa ch kicking th ictions will sometimes nv th e Individual?" Naturally, personal co od ism Rewarding to ned subject is "Is M eth choice. But few If th e assig , yo u ha ve really no are a pio us M eth od ist t of th em will lie an d yo u in th is category. Mos bjects, if any, will fall bo th sides. They assigned su th mu ch to be said on areas of discussion wi w on e way an d in .br oa d legitimate to argue no tua l exercises an d it is Always take th e are int ell ec similar circumstances. er, as debaters do in ll alm os t always no w an oth least defensible. It wi looks to yo u hardest, side th at th at side. 13 write int ere sti ng ly on cts. If tu rn ou t to be easier to ha ve a ch oic e of subje ere yo u y Favorite neral advice appties wh This ge aternities" an d "M on g "The Value of Fr es," by all me an s you are to ch oo se am t I Th in k ab ou t Beetl ol Teacher" an d "W ha yo ur paper, he High Scho e th e ins tru cto r gets to th e beetles. By th e tim en ch tea ch er at pl um p for s tales ab ou t th e Fr to his ears in ted iou bu ild ch ara cte r will be up ab ou t ho w fraternities High an d assertions ve r th ey are, are Bloombury ws on beetles, wh ate on e for life. Your vie and prepare 14 g change. tructor thinks bo un d to be a refreshin uring ou t wh at th e ins rry too mu ch ab ou t fig ces are his Do n't wo wi th him. Chan at yo u can cuddle up ictiops an d you about th e subject so th If he does have conv stronger th an yours. u higher th an views are no keep from grading yo m, his problem is to me an th at you oppose the no t biased. This doesn't in order to sh ow he is ctor says; th at you deserve t from wh at th e instru s cantankerously dissen eve," do no t should alway assigned is "My Pet Pe too. And if th e subject s papers on 'm y gets tiresome sh instructor wh o assign pe t peeve is th e Engli bu t it has sort of begin, "My ring th e War of 1812, This was still fu nn y du oid personalities. pet peeve.'" ral good ma nn ers to av since the n. It is in gene lost its edge ction Slip Ou t of Abstra u will perceive th at college football .. . yo ll stu dy th e essay on do wn to particIf you wi ess is th at it ne ve r gets n for its ap pa lli ng dulln es: "fo otb all is ba d one reaso ry glittering generaliti is just a series of no t ve "fo otb all is a big ulars. It me to o commercial," colleges," "it ha s be co Such ro un d ph ras es for th e players," an d so on . ," "it is ba d for th e co nv inc e hi m, business br ain are un lik ely to ag ain st th e reader's · hi m un co ns cio us . th ey ma y well ren de r

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Th en yo u go to th e he

ar t of th e matter.

l Side Take th e Less Usua ur paper is to take getting interest in to yo e rather simple way of On will wa nt to avoid. If at mo st of th e citizens at dogs e of th e arg um en t th sid yo u choose, explain th ay on dogs, yo u can, if assignment is an ess

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If you want the reader to believe that college football is bad for the players, you have to do more than say so. You have to display the evil. Take your roommate, Alfred Simkins, the second-string center. Picture poor old Alfy coming home from football practice every evening, bruised and aching, agonizingly tired, scarcely able to shovel the mashed potatoes into his mouth. Let us see him staggering up to the room, getting out his econ textbook, peering desperately at it with his good eye, falling asleep and failing the test in the morning. Let us share his unbearable tension as Saturday draws near. Will he fail, be demoted, lose his monthly allowance, be forced to return to the coal mines? And if he succeeds, what will be his reward? Perhaps a slight ripple of applause when the third-string center replaces him, a moment of elation in the locker room if the team wins, of despair if it loses. What will he look back on when he graduates from college? Toil and torn ligaments. And what will be his future? He is not good enough for pro football, and he is too obscure and weak in econ to succeed in stocks and bonds. College football is tearing the heart from Alfy Simkins and, when it finishes with him, will callously toss aside the shattered hulk. This is no doubt a weak enough argument for the abolition of college football, but it is a sight better than saying, in three or four _variations, that college football (in your opinion) is bad for the players. Look at the work oJ any professional writer and notice how constantly he is moving from the generality, the abstract statement, to the concrete example, the facts and figures, the illustration. If he is writing on juvenile delinquency, he does not just tell you that juveniles . are (it seems to him) delinquent and that (in his opinion) something should be done about it. He shows you juveniles being delinquent, tearing up movie theatres in Buffalo, stabbing high school principals in Dallas, smoking marijuana in Palo Alto. And more than likely he is moving toward some specific remedy, not just a general wringing of the hands. It is no doubt possible to be too concrete, too illustrative or anecdotal, but few inexperienced writers err this way. For mostthe soundest advice is to be seeking always for the picture, to be always turning general remarks into seeable examples. Don't say, "Sororities teach girls the social graces." Say, "Sorority life teaches a girl how to carry on a conversation while pouring tea, without sloshing the tea into the saucer." Don't say, "I like certain kinds of popular music very much." Say, "Whenever I hear Gerber Spinklittle play 'Mississippi Man' on the trombone, my socks creep up my ankles."

to achieve this staggering total? Obviously by never using one word when he can somehow work in ten. He is therefore seldom content with a plain statement like "Fast driving is dangerous." This has only four words in it. He takes thought, and the sentence becomes: In my opinion, fast driving is dangerous. Better, but he can do better still: In my opinion, fast driving would seem to be rather dangerous.
If he is really adept, it may come out:

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In my humble opinion, though I do not claim to be an expert on this complicated subject, fast driving, in most circumstances, would seem to be rather dangerous in many respects, or at least so it would seem to me. Thus four words have been turned into forty, and not an iota of content has been added. Now this is a way to go about reaching five hundred words, and if you are content with a "D" grade, it is as good a way as any. But if you aim higher, you must work differently. Instead of stuffing your sentences with straw, you must try steadily to get rid of the padding, to make your sentences lean and tough. If you are really working at it, your first draft will greatly exceed the required total, and then you will work it down, thus:
It is thought in some quarters that fraternities do not contribute as much as might be expected to campus life. Some people think that fraternities contribute little to campus life.

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The average doctor who practices in small towns or in the country must toil night and day to heal the sick. Most country doctors work long hours. When I was a little girl, I suffered from shyness and embarrassment in the presence of others. I was a shy little girl.
It is absolutely necessary for the person employed as a marine fireman to give the matt'er of steam pressure his undivided attention at all times. The fireman has to keep his eye on the steam gauge.

Get Rid of Obvious Padding
The student toiling away at his weekly English theme is too often tormented by a figure: five hundred words. How, he asks himself, is he

You may ask how you can arrive at five hundred words at this rate. Simply. You dig up more real content. Instead of taking a couple of obvious points off the surface of the topic and then circling warily around them for six paragraphs, you work in and explore, figure out

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the details. You illustrate. You say that fast driving is dangerous, and t.hen you prove it. How long does it take to stop a car at forty and at eighty? How far can you see at night? What happens when a tire blows? What happens in a head-on collision at fifty miles an hour? Pretty soon your paper will be full of broken glass and blood and headless torsos, and reaching five hundred words will not really be a problem.

Call a Fool a Fool
Some of the padding in freshman themes is to be blamed not on anxiety about the word minimum but on excessive timidity. The student writes, "In my opinion, the principal of my high school acted in ways that I believe every unbiased person would have to call foolish." This isn't exactly what he means. What he means is, "My high school principal was a fool." If he was a fool, call him a fool. Hedging the thing about with "in-my-opinion's" and "it-seems-to-me's" and "as-1-see-it's" and "at-least-from-my-point-of-view's" gains you nothing. Delete these phrases whenever they creep into your paper. The student's tendency to hedge stems from a modesty that in other circumstances would be commendable. He is, he realizes, young and inexperienced, and he half suspects that he is dopey and fuzzyminded beyond the average. Probably only too true. But it doesn't help to announce your incompetence six times in every paragraph. Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words. Linguistic diffidence can take various forms. One is what we call euphemism. This is the tendency to call a spade "a certain garden implement" or women's underwear "unmentionables." It is stronger in some eras than others and in some people than others but it always operates more or less in subjects that are touchy or taboo: death, sex, madness, and so on. Thus we shrink from saying, "He died last night" but say instead, "passed away," "left us," "joined his Maker," "went to his reward." Or we try to take off the tension with a lighter cliche: "kicked the bucket," "cashed in his chips," "handed in his dinner pail." We have found all sorts of ways to avoid saying mad: "mentally ill," "touched," "not quite right upstairs," "feeble-minded," "innocent," "simple," "off his trolley," "not in his right mind." Even such a now plain word as insq.ne began as a euphemism with the meaning "not healthy." Modern science, particularly psychology, contributes many polysyllables in which we can wrap our thoughts and blunt their force. To many writers there is no such thing as a bad schoolboy. Schoolboys are maladjusted or unoriented or misunderstood or in need of guidance or lacking in continued success toward satisfactory integration of the personality as a social unit, but they are never bad. Psychology no doubt makes us better men or women, more sympathetic and tolerant,

it doesn't make writing any easier. Had Shakespeare been confronted with psychology, "To be or not to be" might have come out, "To continue as a social unit or not to do so. That is the personality problem. Whether 'tis a better sign of integration at the conscious level to display a psychic tolerance toward the maladjustments and repressions induced by one's lack of orientation in one's environment or-" But Hamlet would never have finished the soliloquy. Writing in the modern world, you cannot altogether avoid modern jargon. Nor, in an effdrt to get away from euphemism, should you salt your paper with four-letter words. But you can do much if you will mount guard against those roundabout phrases, those echoing polysyllables that tend to slip into your writing to rob it of its crispness and force.

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Beware of the Pat Expression

Other things being equal, avoid phrases like "other things being equal." Those sentences that come to you whole, or in·two or three doughy lumps, are sure to be bad sentences. They are no creation of yours but pieces of common thought floating in the community soup. Pat expressions are hard, often impossible, to avoid, because they come too easily to be noticed and seem too necessary to be dispensed with. No writer avoids them altogether, but good writers avoid them more often than poor writers. By "pat expressions" we mean such tags as "to all practical intents and purposes," "the pure and simple truth," "from where I sit," "the time of his life," "to the ends of the earth," "in the twinkling of an eye," "as sure as you're born," "over my dead body," "under cover of darkness," "took the easy way out," "when all is said and done," "told him time and time again," "parted the best of friends," "stand up and be counted," "gave him the best years of her life," "worked her fingers to the bone." Like other cliches, these expressions were once forceful. Now we should use them only when we can't possibly think of anything else. Some pat expressions stand like a wall between the writer and thought. Such a one is "the American way of life." Many student writers feel that when they have said that something accords with the American way of life or does not they have exhausted the subject. Actually, they have stopped at the highest level of abstraction. The American way of life is the complicated set of bonds between a hundred and eighty million ways. All of us know this when we think about it, but the tag phrase too often keeps us from thinking about it. So with many another phrase dear to the politician: "this great land of ours," "the man in the street," "our national heritage." These prove our patriotism or give a clue to our political beliefs, but oththey add nothing to the paper except words.

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Colorful Words The writer builds with words, and no builder uses a raw material more slippery and elusive and treacherous. A writer's work is a constant struggle to get the right word in the right place, to find that particular word that will convey his meaning exactly, that will persuade the reader or. soothe him or startle or amuse him. He never succeeds altogether-sometimes he feels that he scarcely succeeds at all-but such successes as he has are what make the thing worth doing. There is no book of rules for this game. One progresses through everlasting experiment on the basis of ever-widening experience. There are few useful generalizations that one can make about words as words, but there are perhaps a few. . . Some words are what we call "colorful." By this we mean that they are calculated to produce a picture or induce ari emotion. They are dressy instead of plain, specific instead of general, loud instead of soft. Thus, in place of "Her heart beat," we may write "Her heart pounded, throbbed, fluttered, danced." Instead of "He sat in his chair," we may say, "He lounged, sprawled, coiled." Instead of "It was hot," we may say, "It was blistering, sultry, muggy, suffocating, steamy, wilting." . However, it should not be supposed that the fancy word is always better. Often it is as well to write "Her heart beat" or "It was hot" if that is all it did or all it was. Ages differ in how they like their prose. The nineteenth century liked it rich and smoky. The twentieth has usually preferred it lean and cool. The twentieth-century writer, li~e all writ~rs, is forever seeking the exact word, but he is wary of soundmg fevensh. He tends to pitch it low, to understate it, to throw it away. He knows that if he gets too colorful, the audience is likely to giggle. See how this strikes you: "As the rich, golden glow of the sunset died away along the eternal western hills, Angela's limpid blue eyes looked softly and trustingly into Montague's flashing brown ones, and her heart pounded like a drum in time with the joyous song surgingin her soul." Some people like that sort of thing, but most modern readers would say, "Good grief," and turn on the television.

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When you hear mother you probably think of home, safety, love, food, and various other pleasant things. If one writes, "She was like a mother to me," he gets an effect which he would not get in "She was like an aunt to me." The advertiser makes use of the associations of mother by working it in when he talks about his product. The politician works it in when he talks about himself. So also with such words as home, liberty, fireside, contentment, patriot, tenderness, sacrifice, childlike, manly, bluff, limpid. All of these words are loaded with favorable associations that would be rather hard to indicate in a straightforward definition. There is more than a literal difference between "They sat around the fireside" and "They sat around the stove." They might have been equally warm and happy around the stove, but fireside suggests leisure, grace, quiet tradition, congenial company, and stove does not. Conversely, some words have bad associations. Mother suggests pleasant things, but mother-in~law does not. Many mothers-in-law are heroically lovable and some mothers drink gin all day and beat their children insensible, but these facts of life are beside the point. The thing is that mother sounds good and mother-in-law does not. Or consider the word intellectual: This would seem to be a complimentary term, but in point of fact it is not, for it has picked up associations of impracticality and ineffectuality and general dopiness. So also with such words as liberal, reactionary, Communist, Socialist, capitalist,

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radical, schoolteacher, truck driver, undertaker, operator, salesman, huckster, speculator. These convey meanings on the literal level, but beyond that-sometimes, in some places-they convey contempt on the part of the speaker. The question of whether to use loaded words or not depends on what is being written. The scientist, the scholar, try to avoid them; for the poet, the advertising writer, the public speaker, they are standard equipment. Bu't every writer should take care that they do not substitute for thought. If you write, "Anyone who thinks that is nothing but a Socialist (or Communist or capitalist)" you have said nothing except that you don't like people who think that, and such remarks are effective only with the most nai:ve readers. It is always a bad mistake to think your readers more nai:ve than they really are. ·

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Colored Words Some words we would call not so much colorful as colored-that is, loaded with associations, good or bad. All words-except perhaps structure w·ords- have associations of some sort. We have said that the meaning of a word is the sum of the contexts in which it occurs. ~en we hear a word, we hear with it an echo of all the situations in whiCh we have heard it before. In some words, these echoes are obvious and discussable. The word mother, for example, has, for most people, agreeable associations.

Colorless Words But probably most student writers come to grief not with words that are colorful or those that are colored but with those that have no color at all. A pet example is nice, a word we would find it hard to dispense with in casual conversation but which is no longer capable of adding much to a description. Colorless words are those of such general meaning
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that in a particular sentence they mean nothing. Slang adjectives, like

cool ("That's real cool.") tend to explode all over t)::le language. They are applied to everything, lose their original force, and quickly die. Beware also of nouns of very general meaning, like circumstances, cases, instances, aspects, factors, relationships, attitudes, eventualities, etc. In most circumstances you will find that those cases of writing which contain too many instances of words like these will in this and other aspects have factors leading to unsatisfactory relationships with the reader resulting in unfavorable attitudes on his part and perhaps other eventualities, like a grade of "D." Notice also what "etc." means. It means "I'd like to make this list longer, but I can't think of any more examples."

5. Roberts's writing style is well-suited to his student audience; he includes examples that would be familiar to many students. How would you describe his writing style? What are some of the ways he uses narration and illustration to make the process analysis easy to follow? (Glossary:
Illustration; Narration)

QUESTIONS ON DICTION AND VOCABULARY
1. Roberts wrote this essay almost fifty years ago, and at some points the

THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT THE TEXT
In this essay, Roberts points out certain features, positive and negative, found in the work of many writers. Does your writing exhibit any of these features? How would you rate your writing with respect to each of these features?

facts he cites indicate this; he gives the population of the United States as 180 million (paragraph 32), whereas today it is over 300 million. Is there anything in his diction or word choice that makes Roberts's writing seem dated, or does it sound contemporary? Choose examples from the text to support your answer. (Glossary: Diction) 2. What does Roberts mean by "colorful words," "colored words," and "colorless words"? 3. What is Roberts's tone in this essay? What words does he use to create this tone? Explain how the tone affects you as a reader. (Glossary: Tone)

QUESTIONS ON SUBJECT
' 1. ·What, for you, is the most important advice Roberts has to offer?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY USING PROCESS ANALYSIS
Before class, find a how-to article that interests you on the Web site for WikiHOW at http:/ /www.wikihow.com/Main-Page. Bring a copy of the article to class and be prepared to discuss why you think the article is incomplete or inaccurate and how you might revise it.

· 29 According to Roberts, what is the job of the writer? Why, in particular, is it difficult for college students to do this job well? Discuss how your college experience leads you to agree or disagree with Roberts. (3'. ·,The author offers several "tricks" or techniques of good writing in his essay. What are they? Do you find them more useful than other techniques? Explain. / 4~ If, according to Roberts, a good writer never uses unnecessary words, then what are the legitimate ways a student can reach the goal of the. five-hundred-word essay? /__.S .J According to Roberts, how has modem psychology made it more diffi. -- cult to write well?

WRITING SUGGESTIONS
1. In paragraph 16, Roberts explains how a brief but good essay on college

QUESTIONS ON STRATEGY
1:' What is Roberts's thesis in this essay? (Glossary: Thesis) 2. Make a scratch outline of Roberts's essay. What are the similarities between his organization of material and the process analysis he outlines for students? (Glossary: Organization) Explain. 3. What kind of information does the title of Roberts's essay lead you to expect? (Glossary: Title) Does the author deliver what the title promises? Why do you think he chose this title? (4:; What are Roberts's main points? How do his examples help him explain 1 · and clarify his main points? (Glossary: Illustration)

football might be written. He obeys a major rule of good writing-show, don't tell. Thus, instead of a dry lump of words, his brief "essay" uses humor, exaggeration, and concrete details to breathe life into the football player. Review Roberts's strategies for good writing. Then choose one of the dull topics he suggests or one of your own, and following the steps he lays out, write a five-hundred-word essay. 2. Roberts's essay was first published in 1958-before personal computers and word processing programs became ubiquitous. Write an essay in which you compare and contrast the process of writing an essay on a typewriter and on a computer. (Glossary: Comparison and Contrast) How is the process similar? How is it different? What equipment and supplies does each require? Which do you prefer? Why?