After reading a sentence in yesterday’s New York Times, I realized that the venerable news organization might provide a fertile ground for examples of unintelligible writing.
So, for the next few weeks I will take examples from some of my favorite “heady,” “intellectual” information sources and show you how you could rewrite them so someone might actually understand them, and might even be persuaded by them. And, in marketing, isn’t it all about persuasion?
The sentence came from an article entitled: U.S. Saw a Path to Qaeda Chiefs Before Bombing, by Mark Mazzetti, in January 5’s New York Times. The opening of the article basically said that last week’s suicide bomber had been thought to be a promising informant for our government. So here it is:
“American intelligence officials said Tuesday they had been so hopeful about what the Jordanian might deliver during a meeting with C.I.A. officials last Wednesday at a remote base in Khost that top officials at the agency and the White House had been informed that the gathering would take place.“
I was struck by the fact that I had to read the sentence three times and it still seemed like an incomplete sentence. (Is it any wonder so many New Yorkers read the Post?)
So, how can this “sentence” be simplified?
Well, obviously what’s wrong with it is it’s way too long and has too many long phrases (what the Jordanian…during a meeting…at a remote base…) so you lose track of what it’s about. So, let’s pare it down to its essentials and then build it back up more clearly:
Pulling out the additional phrases and adjectives we have:
“American officials had been so hopeful about what the Jordanian might deliver during a meeting…that top officials had been informed that the gathering would take place.”
This is a good way to better understand any complex sentence. In this case you can see that even in its simpler form, the sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense. Perhaps something got edited out (darn those copy editors).
Let’s try colloquial English:
It looks like they were thinking of having a meeting with this guy and the CIA at a remote base in Khost. However they weren’t sure about him. Was he for real? Should they have this meeting or not? But they were hopeful about what the he might deliver. And top officials at the CIA and the White House were told “yes, the meeting will take place.”
This is a lot to get across in one sentence. Thankfully you don’t have the deadlines and the need to communicate complicated ideas in one sentence and the draconian copy editors of the Times.
You can see that dividing this idea into several short sentences that have 10-15 words makes it much easier to understand the ideas. It also helps you, the writer, to ensure that you are expressing a clear thought. Because sometimes even writers get so lost in our own dependent clauses that we lose track of our friends the subject and the verb.
Stay tuned as we trawl the content of more newspapers and magazines to help improve our writing.
In the meantime, why not read more about writing copy for the Web?
Tags: concise writing, copy editors, good writing, journalism, New York Times, web content, web copywriting, Web site copy, Website copy, writing, writing clearly, writing well
