Is it hard to write clearly

If we are hoping to communicate something—anything—nothing is more important than clarity. The dangers of not being clear are obvious. Is that driver approaching the intersection signaling right or left? Is the brain surgeon asking for a scalpel or a clamp? One could argue that the consequences of writing an unintelligible sentence are not nearly so drastic as a car wreck or a botched operation. But it’s a slippery slope. Which one of the rungs in the ladder were we warned to watch out for? Was it the basement or the bathtub that Auntie Em told us to take shelter in when the tornado hit Kansas?

Explaining what it means to be clear should, in theory, be easy. But in fact it’s surprisingly difficult to define this deceptively obvious concept. The simplest definition may be best: To write clearly means that another person can understand what we mean. Someone (not us) can figure out what we are trying to say.

Of course, an intelligent seven-year-old could point out the problems with this. Maybe some people will understand what we mean, but some people never will, and inevitably someone will think we meant something entirely different from whatever we had in mind. Endless variables can affect what, and how, and how much we understand: age, class, language, culture, gender, history, and so forth. And perfect communication can occur without one word being spoken.

But let’s say that you have written something, and it turns out that no one has the faintest idea what in the world you could possibly mean—no one but you, the writer. And in the absence of clarity even the writer may forget the formerly obvious purpose that has somehow managed to burrow and hide beneath a fuzzy blanket of language. On the other end of the spectrum is the sentence or paragraph that the reader cannot only comprehend instantly but see straight through to the writer’s intention, so that reader and writer are communicating directly, brain to brain, like aliens in science fiction.

Obviously, it is easier to write a short clear sentence than a long clear one. One sentence that I (and I think most people) would agree is clear is the opening of Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger: “Mother died today.”

A more recent translation by Matthew Ward begins “Maman died today.” In a preface, Ward argues that Maman, more affectionate than Mother, better expresses the narrator’s feelings. “No sentence in French literature in English translation is better known than the opening sentence of The Stranger. It has become a sacred cow of sorts, and I have changed it. In his notebooks Camus recorded the observation that ‘the curious feeling a son has for his mother constitutes all his sensibility.’ And Sartre went out of his way to point out Meursault’s use of the child’s word “Maman” when speaking of his mother.”

Maybe we should venture deeper into colloquial English and say, Mom died today. Not according to the New Yorker blog post in which Ryan Bloom argues that Ward’s use of the French word may be helpful to younger readers unaware that The Stranger is set in French colonial Algeria. Maman, Bloom claims, somewhat contradictorily, is also preferable because the American reader will “understand it with ease, but it will carry no baggage.” So it won’t affect our opinion about Meursault’s response to the death of his mother. But, Bloom goes on, the translation of “Aujourd’hui Maman est morte” really should be “Today Maman died.” Beginning the sentence with today signals that “Meursault is a character who, first and foremost, lives for the moment.”

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