Writing to Be Understood

Since early June, a professor from Carleton University and I have been designing and building software to help people write more clearly. Professor John Medicine Horse Kelly is a journalism professor who won a teaching award for a system of instruction he developed during his twenty years of teaching.

He is an interesting man, humble and soft-spoken. He is a natural listener, and he will listen to almost anything you have to say with a gentle and sympathetic smile. But, if you can stop talking and start listening, he will fill any silence you create with lovely stories about his grandfather, Peter Kelly, or Bill Reid, or any of his Haida relatives and friends. His soft-spokeness masks deep passions. One is teaching.

He has developed a system for teaching students to write well by identifying patterns that students can edit to improve their writing. I have written code that uses the natural language toolkit to read student’s assignments and to identify these patterns. Even I have learned to apply Dr. Kelly’s principles to create writing that is clear, lively and easy to understand. Here are things to watch for:

1. If you use Microsoft Word, use the grammar and style tools to check the Flesch Kincaid grade level.
2. Use the grammar and style tools to find and eliminate passive sentences.
3. Ensure that your writing is composed of words that have an average of about 4.5 characters.
4. Write paragraphs that have an average of about 2.5 to 3.5 sentences.
5. Write sentences that have an average of between 12 and 15 words per sentences.
6. Avoid using too many prepositions. Prepositions cause writing to become complex and hard to read.

I was able to improve this article by using our tool. The first draft of this blog entry read at the grade 10.5 level, and it contained several complexifiers. I was able to eliminate these words, and my writing improved. The draft you are now reading reads at a grade 8.6 level. As I use Dr. Kelly’s system, I see that it works.

Plain writing is important. People can find it hard to understand medical consent forms, legal documents, and privacy policies. Is it ethical to write important documents that ordinary people cannot understand? Is it smart?

In the next few weeks, I am going write about our tool. We call it WISE – Writing Instruction Software for Educators. Recently, we realized that we may have to call it Writing Instruction Software for Everyone. Who knows, if the code is easy to use, and if the principles can be easily explained, we may share the code with anybody who wants to try it. We have to get some legal advice first, but we hope to make a file available for download some time between now and Christmas.