Writing vs. Good Writing

• Author: Bryan A. Garner
• Pages: 26-27

26 || ABA JOURNAL JANUARY 2018

Writing vs. Good Writing

Make the languorous doldrums of reading disappear

By Bryan A. Garner

When Thomas Mann said that

a writer is someone for whom

writing is more di cu lt than it

is for other people, what do you

suppose he meant? That’s our

subject this month.

“All styles are good,” Voltaire

said, “except that which bores.”

The good writer, in other words,

frets a little about piquing the

reader’s interest sentence by

sentence, paragraph by para -

graph—never descending into

unremittingly dull s tretches.

The French even have a word

for those dull stretches: long ueurs.

The good writer, I say, because pedestr ian, workaday

writers couldn’t ca re less. They assume, falsely, that they

have a captive audience when in fact there’s no such

thing. All reader s, even paid readers, rebel with little

provocation: As soon as it gets dul l, they allow their

minds to wander or simply stop read ing. They quit.

In law, of course, this happens all the t ime. Most

expository prose i n law is pretty darned

dreary. Lawyer s come to think of on-the-job

reading as a ted ious, soporifi c part of the

job. When we occasionally encounter some -

thing well-writ ten, our attention immediately

perks up: The languorous doldrums of read-

ing suddenly disappear for the time it ta kes

to read good wr iting.

We instantly realize, i f only subliminally,

that there’s an immense di erence between

writing and good w riting. When that real-

ization rises to the level of con sciousness,

it becomes, in the words of the late Justice

Antonin Sca lia, an “astounding revelation.” He

said he saw his University of Virgi nia students

undergo this epiphany when he was in cha rge of

a legal writing cou rse. Each term, he impressed

upon his students that it takes t ime and sweat to

convert writing int o good writing.

HOW TO BECOME UNENCUMBERED

Consider an example:

Writing: Plainti merely takes two paragraphs out of

context from the Swa rtz publication #2348, which is the

manual dealing w ith career opportunities.

Good writ ing: Dampf merely plucks two isolated

paragraphs from Sw artz’s career-opportunitie s manual.

What are the di erences? (1) The character in this

story has a dra b legal label in the fi rst version but is act u-

ally named in the second. Noth ing helps a story connect

with readers more tha n using the parties’ names. (2) The

fi rst version promi nently mentions #2348, which is bor-

ing and unnecessar y; the second just says what it is—and

does so economically in four word s instead of 11. (3) The

phrasal verb in the fi rst version is nondescript (takes out

of context); in the second, the verb is a viv id metaphor

(plucks). (4) The fi rst version is encumbered with a long

subordinate clause that de -emphasizes crucial informa-

tion; the second version, direct and st raight-shooting,

puts all the informat ion in one tight independent clause.

Also, the fi rst version takes 21 words, the second just

11. Multiply both versions by 667, and you have a full-

length appellate brief w ritten in the one style or the

other. That’s an oversimplifi cation, you say? Perhaps

a little, but the point holds: Reading 14,000 words in

the original st yle is sheer tedium; reading 7,300 words

in the second style is rather enjoyable.

The distinction bet ween writing and good writing

holds in every realm of ex pository prose—and either

type becomes a mat ter of habit. Even something as mun-

dane as a letter bet ween relatives, about a debt that one

has incurred t o the other, can be elevated to

artistr y in the hands of a good writer. Take,

for example, this classic let ter written by the

critic Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) to

his niece Joan Woollcott Jennings in 1940:

Dear Mrs. J.:

I hope that you like your m arriage and

that I, when our paths cro ss, shall like your

husband.

Let us dispose , for the time being, of your

debt to me, which , properly enough, is more

on your mind than on mine . I should like

to have you pay it back un der one of two

circumstanc es: (a) that you do it when, if ever, money

is fl o wing freely in your direction and y ou can make the

repayment witho ut a wrench, or (b) that I myself am in

di culties, in whi ch case I should let out a squawk . If, as

seems not unlikely, I sh ould be gathered unto my fathers

before either of these c ontingencies arises , I hope you will

regard it as a beque st to you. And if there is any order

in your life I wish you would fi le this lett er away as evi-

dence of these tes tamentary intentions. To this contingent

request there is a ttached not a condition bu t a sugges-

tion. If I should hurr y to my grave before you settle our

account, I think you mig ht keep it in mind that I would

like to have you make yo ur repayment take the form of

putting some oth er youngster through college somed ay.

A. W.

“MOST LEGAL

WRITERS

SHOULD ASPIRE

TO SOUND LIKE

THE VOICE OF

REASON.”

—BRYAN GARNER

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