COPY THE IMAGE IN WORDS

Using just these basics to create images can make a very great difference to rewriting bad prose. Let me demonstrate this using the first example on page 203. Because the words as laid out fail to call to mind an image as you read, your mind gropes in vain for something solid to hang onto. Look at the beginning of that first sentence again.

- A primary area

  of potential improvement

  is improving cost-effectiveness

  of field sales-force deployment (and organization)

By the time the field sales force arrives, the rest has disappeared from your mind. But the sentence goes on:

- to reflect the need

  for redefined selling missions

  at store and indirect levels

 dictated by changes in the trade environment

Now, what nouns do we have to hang onto here that are relatively concrete? The sales force, store, and changed trade environment, perhaps. How might they be pictured in relationship to each other?

This seems to indicate that the main relationship being talked about is that of the salesman to the store. Perhaps he meant to say:

- We must redeploy the sales force to match the new

  trading environment

As you can see, the trick is to find the nouns and look for the relationships between them, seeing them as a visual image. Let's apply the technique to the other two examples on pages 203 and 204.

- Preplanned adjustments may be developed

  from the alternative preliminary plans

  submitted by the Group

  and be in the form of outlines

  of contingency plans and prioritized guides to adjustments

  in special programs and other discretionary expenditures

Again, the nouns seem to be "preplanned adjustments," "alternative preliminary plans," and "outlines of contingency plans and prioritized guides" (whatever that means). How might the author mean them to relate to each other?

Apparently what the author wants out of the reader is some sort of contingency plan. In which case he might want to express his message like this:

- Outline the order in which activities will be curtailed should the plan need adjusting

One more example:

-Current needs for accurate cash flow analyses

 are particularly demanding upon the existing system;

 it is not prepared to meet

 the stringent accuracy requirements.

 Improvements are available

 through incorporating information

 not adequately considered in making projections

Right off of course, we can object that it is not the system that is not prepared to meet the stringent accuracy requirements. However, to apply our process, the nouns appear to be "inaccurate cash flow analyses," "system,” "improvements" and "information." Might they go together in this way?

The key insight to be gained from the image is apparently that insertion of the proper information will yield accurate analyses, giving us perhaps:

- The system can produce accurate cash flow analyses if we feed X kind of information into it.

(Without access to the author, we cannot judge what he means by “Information not adequately considered in making projections.")

To summarize, then, a useful way to help yourself write lucid prose is to force yourself to visualize the relationships inherent in your ideas. Once you have a clear mental image, you can straightaway translate it into a clear English sentence, which your reader can just as straightforwardly interpret and absorb. And he has the additional advantage of being able to store this knowledge in his memory in image form.

Storing knowledge in image form is, of course, essential given the word-by-word process of reading and our limited ability to hold many words in our minds. By rescuing the image from the words, the reader is able not only to transfer the knowledge in large chunks, which are more efficient for his mind to process, but also to transfer it as a vivid impression, which makes it easier to recall.

To quote a kinsman of mine, Professor William Minto, who lived in a more leisured era:

In writing you are as a commander filing out his battalion through a narrow gap that allows only one man at a time to pass; and your reader, as he receives the troops, has to re-form and reconstruct them. No matter how large or how involved the subject, it can be communicated only in that way. You see, then, what an obligation we owe to him of order and arrangement - and why, apart from felicities and curiosities of diction, the old rhetorician laid such stress upon order and arrangement as duties we owe to those who honor us with their attention.

Go thou and do likewise.