11 Be Clear and Complete
Philip Loosemore
Don’t leave people guessing what you mean. Be clear and direct, and use lots of examples.
What You’ll Learn:
- Strategies for clarity
- Strategies for completeness
Clarity and Completeness Defined
Clarity
Clarity means readers don’t have to ‘decode’ to understand your meaning:
- Points are clear, direct, straightforward.
- Words are precise but common.
- There’s no filler. (See Concision)
- Sentences and paragraphs are short (with enough variation to keep things interesting).
- There are definitions, examples, and explanations so the meaning is complete.
When in doubt, use plain language, language people can understand on a first reading.
Completeness
Completeness means you’ve left nothing out that your reader needs in order to follow along:
- Ideas are fully explained.
- Terms are defined.
- Context is provided, so readers know why you’re writing and how the ideas relate to the larger world.
- Examples are used wherever appropriate, to illustrate abstract concepts.
Two qualifiers:
- In some contexts, people expect more dense, complex, or indirect language. For instance: some academic writing, along with poetry, fiction, and other personal, expressive forms of writing. “Look at the old house/ Outmoded, dignified/ Dark and untenanted/ With grass growing instead/ Of the footsteps of life” (Thomas, n.d.). Read the original poem here.
- Discipline-specific writing is also not always written for the “general reader,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s unclear. For example, the following statement is unclear to a layperson, but perfectly clear to a software specialist, because the grammar and syntax are clear and the terms are precise: “If I had this requirement, I would probably solve it by creating a base class for my serializers (which I always do anyway for key transforms and other shared behavior [sic]), and then copy the parameter on init” (christophersansone, 2019).
Strategies for Clarity and Completeness
Fix Sentence Structure and Ambiguous Words
Ambiguity refers to “inexact meaning.” It happens in at least two ways:
- Grammar, syntax, and word choice make the meaning unclear.
- A word, phrase, or sentence is unintentionally open to two or more equally possible interpretations.
People who don’t know specific people of a certain gender identity could create biases because of their portrayal in the media.
Here are some questions a reader might have:
- Which of the two “people” nouns does the pronoun “their” refer to?
- Does the writer intend the meaning “People … could create biases”?
- What does the writer mean by the phrase “a certain gender identity”?
Solutions may include the following:
- Be clearer and more specific than the term “gender identity.”
- Clarify who or what “creates” biases—here, it’s stereotypical media portrayals.
- Make the clause “People who don’t know specific people of a certain gender identity” more natural and concrete: “those who have no direct personal experience of transgender identity.”
Consider this revision:
Historically, transgendered identity has been misrepresented and stereotyped in the media. False media portrayals encourage biases among those who have no direct personal experience with transgender people.
Define Terms
Define specialized terms, even relatively common ones that you assume people are familiar with.
In the following passage, the writer defines the term “obsessive-compulsive disorder”:
“I have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a mental disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts or feelings (obsessions) that can lead an individual affected to engage in behaviours (compulsions) that alleviate the anxiety that can come with intrusive thoughts. My OCD is mostly obsessive with compulsive behaviors thrown in under high stress” (Hannah, 2020, para. 3).
Read the source.
Remember:
First ideas are for free. Draft however you need to in order to get your ideas down. Then stand back from your writing and ask yourself where readers are likely to get confused. It’s always challenging to review your own work from an external reader’s perspective, so you should also get feedback from real readers. Ask them where they don’t follow your ideas. Fix the problem areas. But don’t sweat the fact that there are problems! A first draft of anything worthwhile always has them.
Be Precise and Concrete
Consider this statement:
Plastic is bad.
What does this mean? How is plastic bad? What does the writer mean by the term “bad,” anyway?
Considering that plastics are light, tough, cheap, and highly useful in construction and electronics, they can’t be uniformly bad.
In short, the statement is unclear.
The following alternatives are clearer because they are more precise (specific):
Plastic is bad for the environment.
Plastic is environmentally harmful.
The unclear statement (“Plastic is bad”) might come from a writer who is picturing environmental effects or assuming readers are doing the same.
That’s dangerous. When writing, get your assumptions out of your head and onto the page.
The following statement is even clearer and more precise:
Plastic harms ocean life.
Why is this statement an improvement? Because it’s even more precise, and it’s concrete.
Concrete means things you can sense—see, touch, hear, taste, smell.
The terms “environment” and “environmentally” are abstract. It’s hard to picture “environment,” and if you try, there are dozens of things you could think of—birds, trees, a forest, a waterfall, a climate protest, a nature show complete with narration, soundtrack and high-definition images…. It’s different for everyone.
An “ocean” everyone can visualize right away and agree on. It’s concrete.
Add Context
Context means the bigger picture. Context positions your idea in relation to the world around it:
Plastic is everywhere and we can’t avoid it—but it’s harming the oceans.
Now we have more context for the statement that plastic is harmful: It’s everywhere, and its use is seemingly unavoidable.
With context, we better understand why the writer is drawing our attention to the harm of plastic on ocean life. We see that the problem is urgent because it doesn’t have an easy fix.
Provide Examples
Consider this improved version, which comes directly from the original article:
1 Avoiding unnecessary plastic is not just hard, it’s nearly impossible. Bags, take-out food containers and other single-use plastic items spill out of our recycling bins and litter our neighbourhoods. Now we have more data than ever on how plastics are killing our oceans.
2 “You might want to sit down for this: the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic enters our oceans every minute. Mistaking it for food, one in three sea turtles, some 90 per cent of seabirds and more than half of all whales and dolphins have ingested plastic. (Khan & Alfred, 2018)
See the source here.
In paragraph 1, the writers use concrete examples to illustrate the concept of how hard it is to avoid plastic:
- Bags
- Take-out containers
- Other single-use plastic items found in recycling bins and forming litter on the streets
At the end of paragraph 1, the writers make a precise, forceful claim about the effect of plastic on oceans: “Now we have more data than ever on how plastics are killing our oceans.”
Immediately following, in paragraph 2, the writers illustrate this claim with more vivid examples.
Clarity and Completeness in More Abstract Writing
It’s relatively easy to solve issues of clarity and completeness when you’re writing about concrete subjects. You can reach for concrete examples more easily.
What do you do if you’re writing about abstract things, such as concepts and arguments?
The techniques are pretty well the same:
- Be as precise and concrete as possible.
- Contextualize your ideas.
- Define terms.
- Provide examples.
Suppose you’re writing a critique of Bruce Pardy’s argument against accommodations for difference and disability.
If you judge Pardy to be mistaken, your critique might circle around the following idea:
Pardy is wrong.
As it stands, this point is ambiguous and incomplete. (Also, the tone is harsh and dismissive, which is something else we can correct at the same time.)
In 2017, Bruce Pardy, professor of law at Queen’s University, wrote a public opinion piece based on one of his academic articles, in which he argues that it’s unfair to provide extra time on exams for people who identify as having learning disabilities. He claims that the entire point of a timed exam is to “discriminate” between (select among) those who can perform up to standard in the allotted time and those who—for whatever reason—cannot do so.
Here’s a clearer version:
1 In a special for the Canadian newspaper National Post, “Mental Disabilities Shouldn’t Be Accommodated with Extra Time on Exams” (2017), Professor Bruce Pardy argues that accommodations are unfair to students who do not require them. Given enough time, anyone could perform up to standard. But the point of a timed test, he argues, is precisely to see who can perform up to standard in the allotted time, and who cannot.
2 Pardy’s desire to protect academic integrity is understandable. That said, it’s a problem that his argument privileges some types of students and excludes others. However, before even looking at that problem, I want to suggest some different, broader ways to think about how to measure student learning.
3 Pardy assumes education is competition. 4 For instance, he compares accommodations to a runner gaining an advantage in a race:
Last week at the World Track and Field Championships, Usain Bolt ran his final race. Andre De Grasse, the Canadian sprint star, missed his last chance to beat Bolt because of a hamstring tear. If, instead of pulling out of the race, De Grasse had claimed accommodation for his injury and demanded a 20-metre head start, no one would have taken the request seriously.
Yet an equivalent accommodation is standard practice at Canadian universities and colleges. They award extra time on exams and assignments to students who claim mental and cognitive impairments. Extra time for mental disabilities is as unfair to other students as a head start would be to other runners. (Pardy, 2017)
On a first reading, this analogy seems compelling. 5 But there’s a different way to think about it. The entire point of a race is to see who’s fastest. Arguably, the primary purpose of a classroom test is to measure what a student knows and can do, and only secondarily, if at all, to see how fast a student can perform. Increasingly, educators are calling into question the idea that speed relates to skill and ability (see Blodget, 2019). Is speed a valid criterion?
How can we broaden the idea of “education” beyond “testing”? 6 There are many alternatives to the timed test, including simulations and e-portfolios (see Wingfield, 2014).
Additional Strategies
Here are a few final pointers for making your writing clear and complete:
- Use strong, active verbs, not passive ones: “The study showed that…” instead of “It was shown in the study that…”
- Use common words: “This idea emerges grows out of…”
- Use headings, subheadings, and ordered (numbered) or unordered (bullet point) lists.
- Use graphics and graphic organizers wherever possible or appropriate (images, tables, etc.).
Examine the following “unclear stems” (vague and/or confusing statements). Choose one or several of these stems, and write clearer, more complete statements about the topic in the text editor below. Use research, as needed, to develop and define your ideas. Some sources have been provided, but you can use your own research as well. You are welcome to switch position on the topic or keep it the same as in the original.
Make sure your writing and other communications are clear and complete, so that your audience will have no trouble quickly understanding your intended meaning. Strategies include:
- Fixing sentence structure and ambiguous wording
- Defining your terms
- Being precise and concrete
- Adding context
- Using examples
1 Context: Where Pardy’s argument comes from and what it’s about
2 Precision: A much more specific response than “Pardy is wrong”
3 Clarification: Zeroing in on part of Pardy’s argument
4 Example: Specific passage from Pardy’s argument that illustrates the preceding point
5 Clarification: Redefinition of what tests should measure
6 Example: Researched alternatives