Parenthetical.net

If you write, or care about writing, or teach students who write, you must read “Writing English as a Second Language”. It’s a talk William Zinsser gave to new international students at the Columbia Graduate School for Journalism, and it’s so brilliant it made me choke up a little.

It helped me understand the writing decisions my international students make: writing good English is different than writing good Chinese or Korean or Spanish, and not just because the words and grammar are different. We are a different culture and we demand a different experience from our writing: “Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity.”

Native speakers could stand to learn this as well. We can get just as strangled by our pompous multi-syllabic words, just as bogged down in trying to sound important rather than trying to sound clear.

My students are high school students, not journalism students. Some of the writing expectations are different, yes. But if they could all learn “Simple is good” and “One thought per sentence,” the caliber of writing at my school (already pretty high) would shoot through the roof.

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