Sharpen your pencil: Keep writing simple and focused

American writing is not good.

Though there are many exceptions, many of us have trouble with even rudimentary written communication. And it doesn't help that we see bad examples every day: some newspapers, many signs, countless Web sites, some books. How did this happen?

Let's start at the beginning

Where did we learn to write? Grammar school is not that any more, but we learned rudimentary rules in grade school. Unfortunately, some of those "rules" were not rules at all.

The grade-school teacher who told you not to start a sentence with "and" really meant not to write "I have a dog. And a cat. And a parakeet." Those are not sentences. So the rule was just shorthand for making us write in complete sentences. The trouble is that no one disabused us of this notion later. Using "and" and "but" to begin a sentence is one mark of good writing.

And you can, but not often, split an infinitive. "To boldly go where no one has gone before"?would not read or sound the same without the infinitive split. And you can end a sentence with a preposition when necessary. Winston Churchill said, "That is a rule up with which I shall not put."

Some of us honed our writing skills in high school and college. We learned from reading examples of good literature and other forms of writing - from journalistic to persuasive. Unless we fell victim to academic-jargon illiteracy, we usually got better with practice. Though we may still have been handicapped by some false rules from grade school, some of us became at least passable writers.

Then we got worse. We stopped writing much for a while. Early jobs might not have required much writing. Some of us stopped reading much - it wasn't required. And a lot of what we did read was poorly written - think technical or instruction manuals.

The emphasis is writing in plain language. The plain-language movement has many champions, and is slowly winning over professionals in all walks of life. Even lawyers and judges are beginning to sign on to the theory.

Bryan Garner, the noted lecturer on writing and author of many writing books, is my personal hero. You should always keep his "Dictionary of American Usage" on your desk. It is now the standard reference for all American usage. He even has a section on "superstitions," which talks about the sentence-ending preposition, and many more "rules" that never were.

Writing is a skill that can be learned - not that we can learn to be a Shakespeare, Steinbeck or Holmes - or Elmore Leonard. But we don't normally need to write great fiction. We need to write business or professional communication. And we can improve our communication by learning skills or tricks, and unlearning some "rules" that get in the way of good writing.