24 December, 2020

Priceless lessons from my sixth-grade English teacher

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/priceless-lessons-from-my-sixth-grade-english-teacher/2020/12/24/ab8842b2-4545-11eb-975c-d17b8815a66d_story.html

3. If a reader doesn’t understand what you are trying to say, that is your fault — not the reader’s.

Sometimes I complain about cranky emails I receive from people who misread something I wrote. Then I remember Mr. Greco’s dictum that the burden of clarity is always on the writer.

Dense, incomprehensible prose is not an indicator of intellect. It signals that a writer doesn’t sufficiently understand the subject matter or was too lazy to write something clearer.