learning with professionals - Higgins Counterterrorism Research ...

“. . . the month of February . . .” “. . . the city of Munich . . .”
“. . . the 1980-81 period . . .” “. . . whether or not . . .”
“. . . a distance of 20 miles . . .” “. . . at the hour of noon . . .”
There may be occasions when, for the sake of clarity, you need a few extra words. For
example, you might want to be sure that your reader understands you mean the state of
Washington, not Washington, DC. Let the principle of clarity guide you in each case.
Being concise means saying what you need to say in as few words as possible. The two
writing examples that follow illustrate clearly that these students had no concern for conciseness.
Parenthetically after each example, I’ve included my rewrite. Compare the two
and see if you think the point is still made in the shorter version.
“By way of presentation and because of the instructor it was to me, the most successfully
presented, also.” (The instructor’s presentation succeeded.)
“What has been the impact of the tax cuts on the average U.S. citizen, myself
included? Although not an expert in this field, I will attempt to answer this question in
subsequent paragraphs. In as few words as possible, I feel that very little was gained by
the tax cuts.” (The impact of tax cuts on the average U.S. citizen has been minimal.)
The 50-word student dissertation above falls into a common trap: repeating the question
and overstating the obvious. The student was asked to write a brief essay on the
impact of President Reagan’s tax cuts. Many students start out answering a question by
rephrasing or simply repeating it. That’s the old trick of trying to use as many pages in the
examination blue book as possible, to impress the professor with your depth of knowledge.
But believe me, the professor knows the question, and doesn’t need it parroted back.
If anything, do some redefinition of the problem and restate the question in another form
— the form in which you intend to answer it. And do it with conciseness.
That writer does the most, who gives the reader the most information, and
takes from him the least time.
Correctness
12
— Charles C. Colton
Perhaps you are a gifted writer. You may write the clearest, most concise, coherent,
appropriate, and complete paper ever to flow from a word processor; but if it is not correct,
you will offend your reader. I could devote a separate book to this principle alone,
but I hope that the brief summary here and the exercises later in the book will help you
avoid some of the more common pitfalls.
Correctness in intelligence writing has two facets: factual precision and mechanical
correctness. Neither is more important than the other. They complement each other by
providing an edge of finesse that makes one person’s writing better than another’s.