Six Posts About Better Writing

This week and next, I'll publish six short posts about clear writing. The posts will be based on a presentation I used to give to the following groups: the employees of the fundraising consulting firm where I worked before law school; the staff of the St. Louis University Law Review when I was managing editor; and to each class of new lawyers when I was working at a large St. Louis defense firm.

Here are the topics of the upcoming posts:

• The goals of clear writing
• What is muddled writing?
• Why is muddled writing commonplace?
• A few problems that keep us from writing well
• Making a commitment to the goals of clear writing: four suggestions
• Suggestions for further reading

I'll finish by posting an example of something I consider clearly written.

UPDATE 8/10/04. Now that the series is complete, I added links to each post in the series. As for the writing sample, I haven't gotten to it yet. Links to three of my published articles about writing are in the post "A Few Problems That Get in the Way of Good Writing."