Paul's Style Response 5

From Mizzou Wiki

Chapter 10 is about ethical responsibilities writers have. Writers have ethical responsibilities to their readers. According to Williams, responsible writers should “Write to others as you would have others write to you.” Most authors of writing that is difficult to understand do so unintentionally. Occasionally writers will intentionally obscure the meaning of something, or make something seem more or less important than it is. It is clearly an ethical issue when a writer intentionally misguides a reader when the reader could be affected by the topic of discourse. Another ethical issue is necessary complexity. In some cases, the subject of writing can only be discussed using complex language. The chapter also points out that Salutary Complexity and Subversive Clarity both bring up possible ethical issues.

This chapter had many examples of writing that intentionally misled the reader. The examples did a good job of demonstrating that it’s possible to find misleading writing anywhere. The analysis of the Declaration of Independence also demonstrated that a lot of thought goes into good writing; but it also showed that subtle changes in writing can influence the way writing is interpreted, even if the reader doesn’t notice. Overall, Style did an excellent job of presenting basic principles that can lead to clearer writing. The author’s consistently good use of examples to illustrate his points was very helpful.

I thought the analysis of the declaration of independence was interesting. I hadn’t realized all the choices that had been consciously made in its writing. I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one who thinks salutary complexity is a stupid idea. If a reader has to work to understand what they are reading, they are thinking about the presentation of the content, not necessarily the content itself. Overall, I think the book does an excellent job of presenting principles of clarity in a fairly easy to understand way. Hopefully, any writing I do in the future will be clearer as a result of the book.