Herbert E. and Jill M. Meyer. How to Write. Storm King, 1986.
Back in the eighties I had a boss at school who played golf sometimes with a corporate CEO who had connections. Once he played golf with this CEO and a friend who was a speechwriter for then President George H. W. Bush. My boss asked him if he could recommend a book on writing. He recommended How to Write.
This is not written in textbook format. Indeed, it is much simpler. The authors call it a handbook. It is less than 100 pages, but it really does tell us all the basics we need to know to write effectively. I can summarize it in a few short paragraphs so that even reading this review can help us write better.
First, they tell us, organize. That means both gathering and arranging. Gather the information or evidence you need to say what you want to say. Then arrange the information or evidence in a logical manner. Textbooks would go into various methods of organizing such as familiar to unfamiliar, weakest to strongest, chronological, spatial, clustered contrast, and so on. This book does not break it down into that kind of detail, but simply tells us to organize it so it is clear and the reader can follow it.
Second, once you have an outline of some kind, write your first draft. The authors give a lot of encouragement here. Getting out all that you want to say clearly can be hard. It is OK to take a break. It is OK to reorganize. The important thing is to get it down on paper (or some other medium).
Third, take your draft and polish it. The authors give some things to look for. Often writers simply think in terms of grammar and spelling, but perhaps even more important are accuracy and precision. They give a simple example of someone writing—probably a typographical error—that the United States declared its independence in 1876. If that is not corrected, the reader is probably not going to take anything else in such a presentation seriously.
Be precise also in your language. Make sure it says what you want it to say. Use the most specific language that you can without being confusing. It is one thing, for example, to say that the world’s population is in the billions. It is more precise to note that the United Nations Department of Educational and Social Affairs announced that the world’s population surpassed eight billion on November 15, 2022.
This book is not specifically for academic writing. One author is a college teacher. The other has mostly worked as a government official , journalist, and editor. Their advice works for anything from a book to a thank you note. It is worth a look.
The only slight shortfall of the book is simply that some of the examples are dated. After all, the edition I am reviewing came out in the eighties. It speaks of word processors and the Soviet Union. The examples may not be exactly current, but the writing samples that refer to them clearly demonstrate the authors’ points. An updated version came out in the nineties that may reflect some changes. For something that is direct, simple, and clear, it is hard to beat the Meyers’ How to Write. That professional speechwriter knew what he was talking about.
